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CORNELL 

UNIVERSITY 

LIBRARY 




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CORNELL 

UNIVERSITY 

LIBRARY 




H ISTORY 



OF 



PHILADELPHIA. 



1609 -1884. 



BY 



J. THOMAS SCHARF and THOMPSON WESTCOTT 



IN THREE V O L, U lVl E S. 
Vol. I. 



PHILADELPHIA.: 
L. ti. EVERTS & CO. 

1884. 

E.M. 




>H — 



936271 



Copyright, 1884, by L. H. Everts & Co. 



PRESS OF 

J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO., 

PHILADELPHIA. 



t 



PREFACE. 



In presenting this History of Philadelphia to the public no apology is necessary. As a 
record of events, as an exhibition of men, as a chronicle and exposition of institutions and 
resources, the work in this particular field, it is believed, will be found a complete and satisfac- 
tory record, in its every department, of the growth, development, and expansion of a munici- 
pality. This is asserted with a thorough knowledge of what has been done elsewhere since 
the revival of public interest in and enthusiasm for local details, and with a consciousness also 
of the suspicion of arrogance and self-assumption naturally incidental to such pretensions. To 
accomplish so much, and with such a degree of self-satisfaction, has been no holiday task. Of 
the labor, expense, and responsibility involved, very little need be said. The proof is presented 
in these volumes. In their preparation more than twenty times the compass of material, 
expressly procured and arranged, in addition to the great collection of books read and examined 
for collateral information, was digested, condensed, and, in the pertinent newspaper phrase, 
" boiled down" to the present limits. In no sense of the word is this work founded upon, 
built up out of, or repeated from, any previous one on the same subject, or any of its branches. 
It is a new book, treating its theme in a new, comprehensive, and original manner, after 
exhaustive research, thorough examination, and critical comparison of the best authorities, and 
the most authentic documents and authoritative records. This digesting and assimilating 
process has not, perhaps, been carried as far as exigent critics might demand, but in this busy 
and bustling world there is not time enough to polish the front of a city hall as nicely as 
one would a mantel ornament of Parian marble. The proprieties of style have, however, not 
been neglected, for carelessness in that respect would have been equally unworthy of a theme so 
dignified, and of the liberality and beauty of form of the publishers' work. 

A history so comprehensive in its objects and scope, and embracing such an infinitude of 
details, must necessarily have its limitations and defects, because of the impossibility of dis- 
cussing fully a great variety of subjects without occasional errors. It would have been easy 
to escape from them by making the work less copious, by avoiding dangerous or controverted 
themes, and so gliding swiftly over the surface, generalizing and summing up instead of dis- 
playing all the facts. 

The desire to leave nothing untold which could in any way throw light upon the history 
of men, events, and institutions in Philadelphia has made it impossible at times to escape 
repetition. Facts, which fall within the proper cognizance of the narrative of general events, 
will sometimes reappear in another shape in the records of institutions or in special chapters. 
But the fault will claim the reader's indulgence, because intelligent persons prefer a twice-told 
tale to one neglected or half told. 



iv PKEFACE. 



Several of the themes or chapters of the homogeneous whole have been treated by those 
who have some particular association or long acquaintance with the subject. In the diversity 
of writers there will of course be variety of opinions, but they make good the poet's description, 

"Distinct as the billows, yet one as the sea," 

and may not be the worse for each offering a reflection, according to its turn to the light, without 
marring the unity of the general expanse. 

Without Mr. Westcott's indispensable aid and invaluable stores of material on the History 
of Philadelphia, which he has been diligently collecting for the past thirty years, and which have 
been used in every department of this work, it would have been impossible to present the history 
of this great city in the satisfactory shape it now assumes. Indeed, as has been frequently stated 
in the following pages, Mr. "Westcott has devoted a lifetime to the faithful, industrious, and 
intelligent pursuit of this history ; few records have escaped him, and he has supplemented their 
evidence with recollections of a trustworthy character, and with testimony from a thousand 
sources, such as none but the most indefatigable antiquarian would seek or could procure. 
Mr. Westcott has also contributed to the work many valuable and unique drawings, portraits, 
maps,. plans, etc., which are now printed for the first time; and during its progress he has 
also been constantly consulted by all engaged in the preparation of the special chapters, and 
besides furnishing important suggestions, facts, and items, he has read and corrected all the 
proofs, from the first page to the last. Besides the very efficient aid thus rendered during the 
various stages of the work, he has specially prepared for it the chapters on " Progress from 
1825 to the Consolidation of the City, in 1854;" "Music, Musicians, and Musical Societies;" 
" Charitable, Benevolent, and Religious Institutions and Associations ;" " Military Organiza- 
tions, Armories, Arsenals, Barracks, Magazines, Powder-Houses, and Forts ;" " Municipal, 
State, and Government Buildings ;" " Court-Houses, Prisons, Reformatory and Correctional 
Institutions, and Almshouses;" "Public Squares, Parks and Monuments;" "Roads, Ferries, 
Bridges, Public Landings and Wharves ;" " Telegraph," and many other minor subjects. 

The authors would be unjust to themselves, and to the city whose history they have written, 
if they did not acknowledge, in this place, with feelings of profound gratitude, the cordial aid 
extended to them and to their undertaking by the press and people of Philadelphia. They have 
given the fullest encouragement throughout, and have helped materially in elaborating and 
perfecting the work. Important and valuable assistance and information have been received 
from the following persons, to whom also particular recognition is clue : 

To Frederick D. Stone, librarian of the Pennsylvania Historical Society, for valuable memo- 
randa and suggestions made to the authors during the progress of their work ; to Frank Willing 
Leach, for biographical sketches and details in regard to the press and libraries of Philadelphia ; 
to Rev. W. B. Erben, for the preparation of the hist6ry of the Episcopal Church in Philadelphia 
and its institutions and church work ; to Martin I. J. Griffin, for the history of the Catholic 
Church, and its institutions, societies, schools, and church work; to Bishop Matthew Simpson, 
of the Methodist Episcopal Church, Rev. William Cathcart, D.D., of the Baptist Church, 
Rev. Charles G. Ames, of the Unitarian Church, Rev. W. J. Mann, D.D., of the Lutheran 
Church, Rev. W. M. Rice, of the Presbyterian Church, John Edmunds, of the Congregational 



PKEFACE. 



Church, and Rev. Chauncey Giles and T. S. Arthur, of the Swedenborgian Church, for essential 
assistance in the preparation of the history of their respective denominations; to Albert H. 
Hoeckley, for his chapter on " Clubs and Club Life ;" to Charles R. Hildeburn, the librarian of 
the Athenseum, for many kindnesses of various sorts ; to Isaac H. Shields, attorney-at-law, for 
his complete chapter on the intricate and important subject of "The Municipal Government 
of Philadelphia ;" to Lloyd P. Smith, librarian of the Philadelphia and Ridgway Library, for 
many kindnesses and courtesies in smoothing the way, and contributing to the work the 
details for the history of the libraries under his charge, including free access to and use of 
valuable documents; to William Perrine, who contributed to the work the chapters on " Progress 
from the Consolidation Act, in 1854, to the Civil War," "After the Civil War," and "Educa- 
tion ;" to Rev. Jesse Y. Burke for sketch of the Pennsylvania University ; to Hon. James T. 
Mitchell, who kindly revised the chapter on the " Bench and Bar ;" to John Hill Martin, author 
of " The Bench and Bar of Philadelphia," who furnished valuable Civil Lists, and, with a kind- 
ness and courtesy not to be forgotten, allowed the authors to extract all that they wanted from his 
able work ; to Wm. B. Atkinson, M.D., who revised the chapter on the " Medical Profession," 
and S. D. Gross, M.D., LL.D., who read the proofs of the same ; to Charles A. Kingsbury, M.D., 
D.D.S., for materials on Dental Surgery and Institutions; to Lewis D. Harlow, M.D., for 
sketches of Pennsylvania and Philadelphia Medical Colleges ; to Miss May Forney, for the 
chapter furnished by her upon "The Distinguished Women of Philadelphia;" to Professor 
R. M. Johnston, who prepared the chapter on " Literature and Literary Men ;" to Robert R. 
Dearden, A. J. Bowen, J. H. C. Whiting, and John A. Fowler, for much valuable material on 
the history of insurance in Philadelphia ; to Clifford P. MacCalla, Charles E. Mayer, Edward 
S. Roman, John W. Stokes, George Hawkes, Walter Graham, William Hollis, John M. 
Vanderslice, and John Magargee, for valuable assistance in the preparation of the chapter on 
" Secret Societies and Orders." 

Among others to whom acknowledgments are especially due may be mentioned the late 
Edward Spencer, Charles H. Shinn, Nathaniel Tyler, Professor P. F. de Gournay, John Sar- 
tain, Samuel W. Pennypacker, Dr. W. H. Burke, Professor Oswald Seidensticker, James J. 
Levick, M.D., Rev. W. M. Baum, D.D., Frederick Emory, and Professor W. H. B. Thomas, 
who have furnished much valuable information and assistance. 

The publishers have most liberally met every desire, in respect of letter-press and engrav- 
ings of portraits, maps, and other illustrations ; they have spared no expense or effort to make 
the mechanical execution of the volumes equal to its subject, and they have helped in every 
difficulty while the work was in progress. 

Philadelphia, March 1, 1884. 



CONTENTS OF VOLUME I. 



CHAPTER I. 
Topography op Philadelphia . . . . . . . 1 

CHAPTER II. 

The Geological Structure, Vegetation, and Animals op the Site of Philadelphia . . 17 

CHAPTER III. 
The Indians . . ... 30 

CHAPTER IV. 

Discovery and Occupation of the Hudson and Delaware Piters by the Dutch • . 52 

CHAPTER V. 

The Swedish Settlements on the Delaware ... .... 61 

CHAPTER VI. 

The Planting of Philadelphia ... 72 

CHAPTER VII. 

"William Penn ... .... ... . . .77 

CHAPTER VIII. 

"William Penn as a Law-Giver and Statesman . . 87 

CHAPTER IX. 

Pounding the Great City — Penn in Philadelphia— His Administration 94 

CHAPTER X. 

Rapid Growth of the Province and City — " Asylum for the Oppressed of all Nations" — 

Movements of William Penn, 1684-1699 . . 113 

CHAPTER XL 

Manners and Customs of the Primitive Settlers 129 

CHAPTER XII. 

Penn's Administration, 1699-1701— Pennsbury Manor— The Proprietary Returns to England. 157 

CHAPTER XIII. 

The Quaker City, 1701-1750 . 174 

fii 



viii CONTENTS OF VOLUME I. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

PAGE 

Benjamin Franklin and Philadelphia .... 218 

CHAPTER XV. 

Local History and Growth, 1750 to 1775 . . . 243 

CHAPTER XVI. 

Philadelphia during the .Revolution. Part I. — Prom the Stamp A'ct to the Declaration of 

Independence 267 

CHAPTER XVII. 

Philadelphia during the Revolution. Part II. — From July 4, 1776, to the End op the British 

Occupation 322 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

Philadelphia during the Revolution. Part III. — Prom the American Reoccupation to the 

Declaration of Peace, Jan. 22, 1784 . . . . .... 386 

CHAPTER XIX. 

Growth of Philadelphia from the Declaration of Peace, Jan. 22, 1784, to the Passage of the 

Embargo Laws of 1794 . . 433 

CHAPTER XX. 

Philadelphia from 1794 to the Close of the Century . 476 

CHAPTER XXI. 

First Years of the Nineteenth Century to the Trial of the Embargo Act in 1807 . 50" 

CHAPTER XXII. 

From the Embargo to the Close of the War of 1812-15 . . . 530 

CHAPTER XXIII. 

From the Treaty of Ghent to the Close of the Quarter-Century . . . 580 

CHAPTER XXIV. 

Progress from 1825 to the Consolidation, in 1854, of the various Corporations, Boroughs, 
Districts, and other Municipal Bodies, which now in their united form constitute 
the City of Philadelphia ... . 617 

CHAPTER XXV. 

From the Year of Consolidation, 1854, to the Beginning of the Civil War . . 716 

CHAPTER XXVI. 

The Civil War ' . . .... . . 735 

CHAPTER XXVII. 

Philadelphia after the Civil War .... . . 833 



ILLUSTRATIONS OF VOLUME I. 



PAGE 

Almshouse, Friends' Old 191 

Andre, Major J 381 

Arms op Penn 80 

Arnold, Gen. Benedict 389 

Association Battery . . . . . .215 

Autographs of Governors, Deputy Governors, Presi- 
dents of Councils, Assistants in the Govern- 
ment, and Speakers of Assembly, from 1682 to 

1700 128 

Autographs of Penn and Attesting Witnesses to the 

Charter of 1682 Ill 

Bank Meeting-House 121 

Barry, John 304 

Bartram's House 234 

Biddle, Capt. James ....... 557 

Bouquet, Henry 252 

British Barracks . . 253 

British Stamp .... ... 271 

Cadwalader, John 295 

Caricature of Coebett . . ... 498 

Carpenters' Hall . . 290 

Chestnut Street in 1803 511 

Chew, Benjamin ... . 345 

Chew Mansion ... .... 356 

Clarke's Hall and Dock Creek . . . .181 

Continental Currency ....... 336 

Cooper's Prospect frontispiece 

Cooper Shop Volunteer Refreshment Saloon . . 831 

Court-House, Town Hall, and Market in 1710 . . 187 

Delaware Indian Family 49 

Delaware Indian Fort 43 

De Vries, David Pietersen 60 

Diagram of Indian House . . . . 41 

Dickinson, John 276 

Duche, Rev. Jacob 291 

Duche's, Rev. Jacob, House . .... 292 

Evans, Oliver 521 

Evans' Steam Carriage 522 

Fac-Simile of "Weekly Mercury" .... 227 

Ferguson, Mrs. Elizabeth 391 

Fort Casimir or Trinity Fort 70 

'Fort Wilson," Residence of Jajies Wilson . . 401 



page 

Franklin at the Age of Twenty .... 220 

Franklin, Benjamin 458 

Franklin's Birthplace ...... 219 

Franklin's Certificate as Member of Assembly, and 

Receipt for Salary 240 

Franklin's Grave 459 

Franklin's Press 229 

Gallatin, Albert 580 

Germantown Academy ....... 255 

Girard, Stephen 630 

Girard's Dwelling and Counting- House in 1831 . 631 

Goddard, William 285 

Gordon, Patrick 178 

Great Seal of Pennsylvania in 1712, Obverse and 

Reverse 122 

Head-Dress for the Meschianza .... 380 

Henry, Alexander 803 

Holme's Map of Philadelphia and Surrounding Ter- 
ritory 108 

Holme's Portraiture of Philadelphia ... 96 

Horticultural Hall . 847 

House where Jefferson wrote the Declaration of 

Independence 320 

Hudson, Henry 53 

Independence Bell . . ... 245 

Independence Hall in 1778 322 

Independence Hall in 1876 (Interior) . . 318 

Indian Autographs ... ... 39 

Kane, Dr. Elisha K 725 

Keith, Governor Sir William . ... 177 

Lafayette Arch . . 609 

Letitia House 109 

Lindstrom's Map of Delaware Bay and River . 74 

Lindstrom's Map of New Sweden on the Delaware. 73 

Logan, James 161 

London Coffee-House ...... 282 

Machinery Hall 845 

MAcrnERSON Blue, A 494 

Main Centennial Exhibition Building . . 841 

Map of Delaware Bay and River .... 71 

Market-House (Second and Pine Streets) . . 213 

McLane, Col. Allen 375 

ix 



ILLUSTKATIONS OF VOLUME I. 



Meade, Gen. George G 

Meeting-Place of the Piest Assembly at Upland . 

Memorial Hall 

Meschianza Procession 

Meschianza Ticket 

Miles, Gen. Samdel 

Mifflin, Thomas 

Monument to mark the Site of the T: 

Morris, Robert 

"Morris House" (Samuel B. Morris' 

ington's Residence in Germantown in 1793) 
Mount Pleasant 
Mud Island in 1777 



Markham 



Nixon, John 

Oath and Signatures of Governor 

in 1681 
Oath of Allegiance 
Oswald, Col. Eleazer 
Paine, Thomas 
Paoli Monument 
Patterson, Gen. Robert 
Penn, John 
Penn, William 
Penn's Burial-Place 
Penn's Brew-House 
Penn's Clock . 
Penn's Treaty-Tree in 
Pennsylvania Hall 
Pennsylvania Journal 
Philadelphia Arcade 
Philadelphia Bank 
Pillory . 
Plan of British Fortifications around 

in 1777 . . . 

Plan of Fort Mifflin . 
Plan of the Battle of Germantown 
Plan of the Town and Fort of Christiana 
Plat of Approaches to Germantown . 



1800 



reaty-Thee 



House, Wash- 



's Council 



page 
812 
102 
844 
379 
378 
308 
280 
106 
277 

278 
390 
361 
321 

94 
338 
425 
309 
349 
755 
258 
77 
82 
153 
163 
104 
651 
2S1 
618 
536 
201 



Philadelphia 



360 
363 
354 
64 
353 



1800 



Plat of Operations on the Delaware 
Poor Richard Almanac, 1733, Title-Page op 
President's Chair, and the Desk upon which 

Declaration of Independence was Signed 
Provincial Currency .... 

Reed, Joseph ...... 

Residence of Lord Howe 

RlTTENHOUSE, DAVID .... 

rlttenhouse observatory at norriton 

Sanitary Fair Building 

Schuylkill Club Emblem 

Scull & Heap's Map of Philadelphia in 1750 

Seal of Philadelphia in 1683 

Seal of Philadelphia in 1701 

Second Street north from Market about 

Shee, John 

Shippen, Edward (First Mayor) . 

Slate-Roof House 

Slave Advertisements .... 
State-House in 1744 .... 
Stewart, Capt. Charles 

Stone Prison 

St. Augustine's Catholic Church . 
St. Clair, Gen. Arthur 
Stuart, George H. 
Stuyvesant, Governor Peter 
susquehannah indian 

Thomson, Charles 

Thomson's, Charles, Residence 
Title-Page of Frame's Poem 

Unite or Die 

Walnut Street Prison .... 

Washington's Headquarters at Valley Forge 

Washington Guards 

Welsh, Hon. John .... 

Wharton Mansion .... 

Whitefield, George 

Willing, Thomas .... 



PAGE 

306 

237 



. 317 

. 197 

. 279 

. 351 

. 263 

. 261 

. 815 

. 233 

. 14 

. Ill 

. 173 

. 511 

. 307 

. 158 

. 147 
200, 256 

. 207 



748 
202 
667 
437 
830 
68 
33 
274 
275 
223 
303 
267 
369 
563 
842 
377 
238 
276 



HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA. 



CHAPTER I. 
TOPOGRAPHY OF PHILADELPHIA. 

" Pulchra duos inter sita Stat Philadelphia rivos ; 
Inter quos duo aunt niillia longa via. 
Delawar hie major, Sculkil minor ille vocatur; 
India et Suevi6 notus uterque diu. 
JEdibus oruatur multis urbs limite longo, 
Quse parva emicuit tempore magna brevi. 
Hie plateas mensor spatiis delineat acquis, 
Kt dotnui recto est ordine juncta domus." 
— Thomas Makin, In laiides Pen-nstjlvaniif jwnrn, 1729. 

HlSTOKY, as men have come to learn, is not simply 
the annals of kings and queens, of factions and par- 
ties, nor must it rest with recording the hattles and 
movements of armies and the proceedings of parlia- 
ments and assemblies. To satisfy intelligent inquiry, 
to instruct as well as amuse, it should present a pic- 
ture of the country and the people, and show how 
external circumstances and internal relations have 
reciprocally acted one upon the other to mould char- 
acter and determine events. The court, the forum, 
the public assemblage are not to be neglected, but the 
full history of a country or a period cannot be written 
until we have accompanied the people to their firesides, 
and seen how they lived, ate, dressed, thought, spoke, 
and looked. The historian should be an artist, full 
of sincerity, full of imagination, and even a degree 
of sentiment for his work, but that work must be 
founded in the first instance upon close, accurate, ex- 
haustive study of the age, the men, the manners and 
customs, and all the private concerns, as well as the 
public performances of the community which is 
dealt with. In the pursuit of such inquiries nothing 
which is relevant can be trivial, for history resembles 
a post-mortem examination, which must be so con- 
ducted as to enable us not only to reconstruct an 



Note. — The author wishes to state in advance that not only the present 
chapter, but much of all that succeeds it, has been prepared in associa- 
tion with Thompson Westcott, and with the indispensable aid of his 
manuscripts, his collections of material, his researches, and his exten- 
sive publications on the subject of the history of Philadelphia. He has 
devoted a lifetime to the faithful, industrious, and intelligent pursuit of 
this history; few records have escaped him, and he has supplemented 
their evidence with recollections of a trustworthy character and testi- 
mony from a thousand sources, such as none but the most indefatigable 
antiquarian would seek or could procure access to. Such aid, such cheer- 
ful co-operation, such fruitful products of untiringindustry in special in- 
vestigation cannot fail to make the present work luminous in respect 
of that intimate local information and those obscure but essential par- 
ticulars into which so few histories descend. 
1 



actual living frame from inanimate remains, giving 
accurately all the details of race, age, sex, complexion, 
frame, general conformation, and individual peculi- 
arity, but to show also with firm and irrefutable 
demonstration what was the lesion under which the 
vital powers were extinguished, what organs were 
affected, and how their disorder came to be climaxed 
in dissolution. An era or an epoch is as the life of a 
man, and must be studied with the aid of the scalpel 
and the microscope. In no other way can an accurate 
and vivid reproduction of the past be effected. Es- 
pecially should the historian avoid interpreting a past 
age by the feelings, sentiments, and experiences of the 
present. He must, as nearly as possible, assimilate 
himself to the times and the men he is describing, 
analyze their shortcomings and prejudices in the same 
atmosphere and light that engendered them, and 
enter into the period as if he belonged to it. Thus, 
as Taine has acutely said, " through reflection, study, 
and habit we succeed by degrees in producing senti- 
ments in our minds of which we were at first uncon- 
scious ; we find that another man in another age 
necessarily felt differently from ourselves ; we enter 
into his views and then into his tastes, and as we place 
ourselves at his point of view we comprehend him, 
and in comprehending him find ourselves a little less 
superficial." 

The historian who holds this opinion of his duty 
and his task must always look with peculiar pleasure 
upon all that concerns the birth, growth, and develop- 
ment of cities, for it is in these congregated and 
crowded communities that man is seen working at 
most freedom from the restrictions and limitations of 
nature and evolving the greatest results from that 
complex and co-operative force which we call society. 
Civilization itself is the product of civic and social 
life, and depends for its continuance upon the main- 
tenance of society in a healthy civic condition. The 
city is the fountain of progress ; it is the type, how- 
ever, and exemplar of the State, though often its fore- 
runner. 

The city of Philadelphia must always be an object 
of particular and inexhaustible interest to the student 
of American history and American institutions. Pecu- 
liar in its origin and initial institutions, — a city which 
was made and did not spring spontaneously from the 
concurrence of circumstances and surroundings,— it 
yet took its place at a very early day as the focus of 

1 



HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA. 



American tendencies and aspirations, and became the 
centre and the birthplace of the United States as an 
independent Commonwealth. In the military and in 
the political history of this nation Philadelphia occu- 
pies the foremost place. It was founded as an asylum 
of peace and the home of pacific industry, but it be- 
came not only the sport and the prey of contending 
armies, but the arsenal of the war-making power of 
the continent during seven years of eager and fluctu- 
ating contest. The greatest of deliberations were 
carried forward to national conclusions within its ven- 
erated walls, and from it as a centre were derived those 
impulses to sublime action which attain even grander 
proportions as they recede in the vista of time. Here, 
too, American industry was first fostered in a pecu- 
liarly national and American way, until a continental 
policy grew out of local practice and the successes 
which attended local experiment. Philadelphia has 
besides a history of its own, which catches in a pecu- 
liar manner the light of the genius loci. In many re- 
spects of constitution, institutions, municipal rule and 
law, construction, manners and customs, it is dissimi- 
lar from other cities and possesses a physiognomy all 
its own. It is the aim of the present work to give the 
history of Philadelphia with accuracy and intelli- 
gence, omitting nothing that will contribute in any 
degree to illustrate its origin and growth, its national 
importance, and its peculiar local features, — to paint 
a portrait of the city as it was and as it is, in which 
every lineament shall be truthfully portrayed and 
represented with life and vigor enough to make its 
fidelity acknowledged by all. If these objects can be 
attained by zeal, sincerity, and faithful, patient, and 
exhaustive research, the author has no fear of the 
reception which awaits his formidable undertaking. 

"Philadelphia," says the worthy Dr. James Mease, 
in his "Picture" of the city, published in 1811, "lies 
on a plain nearly level, and on the western bank of 
the river Delaware, in 39 degrees 57 minutes of north 
latitude, and 75 degrees 8 minutes of longitude west 
of London. It is about one hundred and twenty miles 
distant from the ocean by the course of the river, and 
sixty in a direct line ; its elevation above low-water 
mark ranges from two to forty-six feet, the highest 
part being between Seventh and Eighth Streets from 
Schuylkill." This topographical description is not, 
however, so accurate as that of Mr. Makin, the learned 
schoolmaster, quoted at the head of this chapter, and 
which his successor, Proud, the historian, has rendered 
into stanzas after the style of Alexander Pope, — 

" Fair Philadelphia next is rising seen, 
Betwixt two rivei'B plac'd, two miles between," — 

and so on. This is not precisely what Mr. Makin says, 
but it will serve. The peculiarity of the site proceeds 
from the fact that the city, placed upon the western 
side of one great river, lies almost immediately upon 
the delta of another stream not so large, yet of con- 
siderable length and volume, and draining a wide sec- 



tion of country. The Delaware empties at a distance 
below into a wide bay, but the Schuylkill has a true 
delta, comprising several mouths. When the Swedes 
first came upon the spot these outlets were still more 
numerous than now, and it has been conjectured, not 
without probability, that in some prehistoric period 
some one of the main debouches of the stream was 
from Fairmount, or some point between that and the 
Falls of the Schuylkill, eastward across to the Dela- 
ware at or about Kensington, by the beds of the strea ms, 
creeks, and coves now or formerly known by the names 
of Frankford, Cohocksink, Pegg's Run, Gunner's 
Run, etc. 1 If this were the case really, Philadelphia 
would properly be described, so far as the original 
city is concerned, as occupying the upper part of an 
island in the delta of the Schuylkill, where its several 
mouths empty into the Delaware. 

The range of hills and mountains in Virginia, 
Maryland, and Pennsylvania is invariably from 
northeast to southwest. The streams of these sec- 
tions, on the other hand, flow in a general course 
from northwest to southeast. They are thus forced 
to cut through the ranges transversely in their 
course to the sea. What the Potomac does at Har- 
per's Ferry and Point of Rocks and the Susquehanna 
between Harrisburg and Port Deposit, the Delaware 
repeats at the " Water-Gap" and the Schuylkill at 
Fairmount. The Potomac, in bursting through the 
South Mountain of Maryland and Virginia, needed 
the waters of the Shenandoah to aid it. In the same 
way the Schuylkill is reinforced by the Wissahiccon 
before it cuts through the Fairmount barriers. The 
Delaware and the Susquehanna neither of them have 
risen as far west as the loftier and broader breast- 
works of the Alleghanies, their upper streams pass- 
ing to the eastward of these ranges and descending 
almost on north and south parallel courses from the 
neighborhood of the noble table-lands of central New 
York, where the flattening out of the mountains has 
enabled an easy artificial stream for commerce to be 
constructed from the great lakes to the Hudson River. 
The Schuylkill rises in the eastern foot-hills of these 
mountains, and, fed by many small streams and forest 
rills, makes a tortuous way through an uneven coun- 
try to the Delaware, with which it mingles by mouths 
so obscure and insignificant that the Dutch called it 
" hidden river," and the early Swede cartography con- 
founded it with the minor coves and creeks which in- 
dent the western bank of the Delaware in so many 
places from the Horekill to the Neshaminy. Leaving 



l On Hill's map of the rity,1706, the approach of Falls' Eun to the head 
of Wingohocking, which flows into Frankford Creek, and the ponds nnd 
hollows stretching across on the line of Pegg's Run, are marked iu such 
relief as to give a topographical plausibility to this Idea. A canal was at 
that time cut across part of the peninsulain such away as toshowadesign 
to unite the two rivers at that point. An original cut-off of the Schuyl- 
kill at the Falls -would account for this insignificance of the river's mouth 
where it actually and finally empties into the Delaware. The assump- 
tion that there was such a cut-off, however, must be left where it belongs, 
in the domain of pure conjecture. 



TOPOGKAPHY. 



out the strictly alluvial country, we may assume that 
it is the general topographical characteristic of Phila- 
delphia County to consist of gentle ranges of hills 
running from northeast to southwest, separated by 
valleys or low plains, and cut transversely by numer- 
ous streams flowing from northwest to east and south- 
east, except where the water-shed deflects them into 
the Schuylkill, in which case their course is from a 
little east of north to a point or two west of south. 
This of course is the general description only. There 
are many exceptions, the character of which will be 
shown farther on. Each of these streams, cutting 
through the ranges of high ground, had its own con- 
terminous valley, and these valleys interrupted and 
broke up the blufl's bordering on the Delaware, which 
otherwise would have been continuous. These bluffs, 
it must be remarked, on the Delaware side had the 
true characteristics of river dykes or levees, the result, 
in part at least, of glacial action. They rested upon 
gravel, and were higher than the land back of them, 
so that the original ground upon which Philadelphia 
stands did not drain to the river directly, but back- 
wards to the smaller streams, which broke through 
the dyke at intervals. In the tide-washed flat lands 
near the debouch of the Schuylkill the minor streams 
originally flowed indifferently between the Delaware 
and the Schuylkill, with openings into both rivers, 
like canals. When there was a freshet in the Dela- 
ware that river must have overflowed by Hollandaer's 
Kyi and half a dozen more such estuaries into the 
Schuylkill. 

The true latitude and longitude of Philadelphia 
we give from a compilation made by Prof. B. A. 
Gould for one of the numbers of "The American 
Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac." The data are 
determined for the observatories in each case (Inde- 
pendence Hall being here taken) : 

Philadelphia, N. Latitude, 39° 57' 7.5"- (MS. 
communication from Prof. Kendall) ; Longitude E. 
from Washington (U. S. Coast Survey) : 

m. b. 

By 5 sets Eastern clock-signals . . 7 33.66 
By " Western " . 33.60 



Mean 



. 7 33.63 



The mean, by comparison with the 

next East station (Jersey City), is 7 33.64 

Hence the longitude in arc is 358° 6' 35.4" from 
Washington, and from Greenwich, 75° 9' 23.4". 1 

1 Oil July 5, 1773, tlie "Right Honorable the Earl of Dartmouth, who 
was at that time Colonial Secretary (he had succeeded Lord Hillsbor- 
ough one year before) in the cabinet of George III., wrote to the Deputy 
Governor of Pennsylvania (John Penn, the son of Richard Penn, who 
was the fifth child of William Penn by his second wife, Hannah Callow- 
hill) propounding certain "Heads of Enquiry relative to the present 
State and Condition" of Pennsylvania. The answers to these inquiries 
were transmitted to Lord Dartmouth under date of Jan. 30, 1775. In 
tbe communication the following occurs: " Tlie City of Philadelphia, sit- 
uated near the Conflux of Delaware and one of its chief Branches, the 
Schuylkill, is the most considerable Town in the Province, or indeed in 




The city is 96 miles from the Atlantic Ocean, 125 
miles in a direct line northeast of Washington, and 
85 miles southwest of New York. Its greatest length , 
north-northeast, is 22 miles; breadth, from 5 to 10 
miles ; area, 82,603 acres, or 129.4 square miles. The 
surface between the rivers Delaware and Schuylkill 
varies in elevation from 30 to 300 feet, the alluvial 
flats, however, having originally no actual relief 
above the line of high tide, while in the district west 
of the Schuylkill the face of the country is undu- 
lating to a degree which is almost rugged in contour 
and romantic in aspect. The valley of the Wissa- 
hiccon and the reservations made for Fairmount Park 
have long been celebrated for their effective scenery 
and the fine composition of forest and stream, rocky 
hillsides; deep vales, and wild ravines. 

Penn's original city was laid off in the narrowest 
part of the peninsula between the Delaware and the 
Schuylkill Rivers, — the belt of the ir- 
regular-shaped urn or vase, so to speak, ^f::;:;:<^ 
which is thus formed, — and five or six 
miles above the mouth of the latter 
river. If we might take the peninsula w/im 
to be a guitar, and could place the strings across 
the instrument instead of lengthwise, they would rep- 
resent the contour of the old city's streets, bounded 
on the west by the Schuylkill, on the east by the 
Delaware, determined on the north by Vine Street, 
and on the south by South Street, or Cedar Street, 
as it was formerly called. The distance between the 
Delaware and the Schuylkill on Market Street was 
10,922 feet 5 inches (2^^ miles). The distance from 
north side of Vine Street to south side of Cedar 
(or South) Street was 5370 feet 8 inches, being 90 feet 
8 inches over one mile. Excluding the width of 
streets the space was divided thus : From Cedar to 

North America. The State-House in this City lies in North Latitude, 
39° 50' 53"; its Longitude from the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, 
computed West, 75° 8' 45" ; or, in lime, 5 hours and 35 secondB. This 
Latitude and Longitudo were both fixed by accurate astronomical Ob- 
servation at the Transit of Venus, 1769." In the Journal of Mason and 
Dixon, November, 1763, we learn that these surveyors established an 
observatory in the southern part of Philadelphia, in order to find the 
Btarting-point of the parallel which they were to run oif. Their point 
of departure was "the most Southern part tif Philadelphia," which they 
ascertained to be tlie north wall of a house on Cedar Street, occupied by 
Thomas Plumstead and Joseph Huddle, and their observatory must have 
been immediately adjacent to IhiB. The latitude of this point they de- 
termined to be 39° 06' 29". 1 north. In 1845, when the northeast corner- 
stone of Maryland could not be found (it had been undermined by a 
freshet, and was then taken and built into the chimney of a neighbor- 
ing farm-house), the Legislatures of Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Dela- 
ware appointed ajoint commission, who employed Col. Graham, of the 
United States Topographical Engineers, to review Mason and Dixon's 
work so far as was requisite in order to restore the displaced corner. 
Col. Graham, in the course of his measurements, determined the latitude 
of the Cedar Street observatory to be 39° 56' 37.4" north. This is 8.3" 
more than the latitude given by Mason and Dixon. If we add the dis- 
tance from Cedar Street to Chestnut Street, 2650 feet, we have for Inde- 
pendence Hall latitude as determined by Mason and Dixon, 39° 56' 55"; 
as determined by Col. Graham, 39° 57' 03". The slight variation in 
these calculations is surprising. That reported by Governor Penn may 
have been based upon data differing from those of the surveys of 1761 
and of Mason and Dixon. The bouse selected by Mason and Dixon was 
on the south side of Cedar, east of Front, No. 30, standing in 1883. 



HISTORY OP PHILADELPHIA. 



Lombard Street, 322 feet ; to Pine, 282 feet ; to Spruce, 
473 feet; to Walnut, 820 feet; to Chestnut, 510 feet; 
to Market, 484 feet ; to Arch, 664 feet ; to Race, 616.5 
feet; to Vine, 632.3 feet, making, with the width of 
the streets added, an area of nearly two square miles, 
or twelve hundred and eighty acres. The width of 
the squares from the Delaware to the Schuylkill varied 
from three hundred and ninety-six to five hundred 
feet. 1 In 1854 the limits of the city were widely 
extended, so as to embrace the whole of Philadelphia 
County, including the area and dimensions given 
above. This was effected by the "consolidation" 
of all the suburbs and outlying districts and town- 
ships with the city proper. Consolidated Philadel- 
phia is bounded on the east by the Delaware River, 
on the northeast by Bucks County, on the north-north- 
west and west by Montgomery County, on the west and 
the south again by Delaware County and the Delaware 
River. The northeast boundary line follows Poques- 
sing Creek from its mouth along towards its source, 
the ancient boundary of Byberry; just northwest of 
the old road to Newtown the line corners and runs 
southwest in a straight line to the Tacony at what 
was called Grubtown ; from this point it goes straight 
northwest on the boundary of Bristol township to a 
corner more than a mile northeast of Mount Airy; 
thence a mile southwest to the line of German 
township ; thence northwest four miles to a corner ; 
thence southwest straight to the Schuylkill at the 
point of the old soapstone quarries, crossing the Wis- 
sahiccon about half a mile northwest of Chestnut 
Hill. The line now follows the bed of the Schuyl- 
kill southeast to a point just below the mouth of the 
Wissahiccon, from this corner crossing southwest in 
a straight line to Cobb's Creek at a point a mile and 
a fourth west from Haddington ; thence by Cobb's 
Creek to the junction of Bow Creek north of Tinnecum, 
and by the east bank of Bow Creek to the Delaware. 
The distance from the extreme northeast corner of By- 
berry to the extreme southwest corner of Kingsessing 
is between twenty-three and twenty-five miles. From 
League Island northwest to the Chestnut Hill corner 
is very nearly fifteen miles ; from the soapstone 
quarry on the Schuylkill across to the mouth of the 
Poquessing it is fifteen miles ; and from Gloucester 
Point to the ford at the old Blue Bell tavern is seven 
miles. The general statement of the " face of the 
country" in the old maps, made on the basis of town- 
ships, is: City, " level ;" built part of Northern Liber- 
ties and Southwark, "level;" Blockley, "gentle de- 
clivities;" Bristol, " hilly ;" Byberry, " pretty level ;" 
Dublin, "gentle declivities;" Germantown, "hilly;" 
Kingsessing, " mostly level ;" Moyamensing, " level ;" 
Moorland, "pretty level;" Northern Liberties (out 
part), " mostly level ;" Oxford and Frankford, " gen- 
tle declivities;" Passayunk, " level ;" Penn, "mostly 
level ;" Roxborough, " hilly." Of the townships, 



1 Hazard's third volume of WatHon's A minis. 



Blockley and Kingsessing were west of Schuylkill, 
bordering on Montgomery and Delaware Counties; 
Kingsessing, Passayunk, Moyamensing, Southwark, 
City, Northern Liberties, Oxford, and Dublin were 
touched by or bordered on the Delaware ; Byberry 
bordered on Bucks and Montgomery ; Moreland, 
Dublin, Oxford, Bristol, Germantown, and Roxbor- 
ough bordered on Montgomery ; and Roxborough, 
Penn, City, and Passayunk had the Schuylkill on 
their west. 

The most picturesque and agreeable approach to 
Philadelphia is from the northwest, crossing the 
Schuylkill above the Falls, and descending by way of 
the Ridge or the Germantown road. The least im- 
posing approach, so far as the land surface is con- 
cerned, is by the west bank of the Delaware, following 
the line of the old King's road and the Philadelphia, 
Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad. This road, 
however, is made beautiful by the aspect of the noble 
river lying upon the right in broad and generous 
reaches, and seeming to rise above the level of the 
foot-passenger as he looks across its populous and 
busy bosom ; by the multitudinous evidences of a 
gigantic industry, employing force and machinery 
with an intelligent usurpation that inspires new con- 
ceptions of man's power over nature ; and by the 
gentle beauty of the margin of firm land in Delaware 
County parallel to the river at about an average dis- 
tance of a mile inland. This, called " the water- 
shade," marks the bank of the prehistoric river be- 
fore its present margin of fiats was upheaved, and its 
moderate elevation and rounded slopes afford many 
fine building sites, while contributing largely to the 
advantage of the adjacent manufacturing establish- 
ments. This line of approach, moreover, was that by 
which the early settlers came to Philadelphia, the 
route of the Swedes and of William Penn. We can- 
not do better than follow in their footsteps in attempt- 
ing to trace up the topography of Philadelphia. 

The circle of twelve miles radius from New Castle 
as a centre which defines the boundary of the State of 
Delaware on the northeast, touches the banks of the 
Delaware River a few rods northeast of the mouth of 
Naaman's Creek or Kill, a stream whose several forks 
rise not far inland of the water-shed line. The land 
through which the body of the creek flows is fiat and 
diluvian in its origin, as is all the land from the 
river's margin to the " water-shade," from this point 
until Crum and Ridley Creeks are reached, when we 
begin to encounter marsh, swamp, and pure alluvium 
or mud deposits. The Swedes held most of the land 
in this section at the time of Penn's arrival. Oelle 
(or Woolley or Willy) Rawson owned the mill-site on 
the creek where the King's road crossed it. Naaman, 
it is supposed, was an Indian chief who gave his 
name to this kill, a fact which Lindstrom's map 
seems to show. He was one of the sachems treating 
with Governor Printz on his first arrival, and Cam- 
panius quotes a friendly speech he made on that occa- 



TOPOGRAPHY. 



sion. The arc of the boundary circle dips into the 
river in what was the land of Nathaniel Langley. 
Adjoining him on the northeast were plantations sold 
by Penn to William Hewes, Robert Bezar, William 
Clayton, William Flower, Sandeland, and other old 
settlers. These lands lie in Chichester township. The 
main public road from Concord to Chichester (or 
rather to Marcus Hook landing), which was laid out 
as early as 1686, reached the Delaware between the 
lands of Clayton and Sandeland, and here was doubt- 
less a landing and a shipping place from a very early 
period. Marcus Hook, with the adjacent creek, 
variously called Marrieties Kill, Chichester Creek, 
Memanchitonna [La Riviire des Marikes is Lind- 
strom's translation of the name), was deeded by Queen 
Christina to Lieut. Hans Amundsen Besh, the deed 
including all the land to Upland. It afterwards fell 
into various hands. The Marrieties Kill, like Naa- 
man's, was the main channel of several forks rising in 
the front part of the water-shade. All the rivers in 
this section which have been or will be described are, 
without exception, tidal and salt-water streams from 
their mouths to the rising ground of the water-shed, 
where they lose their character of. coves or estuaries 
and become brooks, rills, or inland rivers, with volume 
ample for milling purposes but too much fall for navi- 
gation. The Swedes gave the name of " Finland" to 
this entire township, the Indian name of the district 
being Chamassung. 

Several creeks or kills of minor importance, but all 
of which extend inland across the railroad and the 
ancient King's road, succeed one another to the north- 
east of Marcus Hook — Middle Run, Stony Creek, 
Harwick's Kill, Lamako Kill, etc. — until we come to 
Chester Creek. The character of the face of the 
country hereabouts as it was originally may be 
gathered from the fact that before Upland (now 
Chester) acquired its importance as the seat of the 
colonial court, the old King's road diverged to the 
left to avoid the low lands, and crossed the creek at 
Chester Mills, at the foot of the water-shed. After- 
wards it was continued along the water-front, passed 
through the town, and then made a sharp angle to 
the left in quest of firmer ground. On the southwest 
side of Upland Kill, from the mill and ford to the 
Delaware, the land was originally owned by Holbert 
Henriksen, John Bristow, and Robert Wade, the 
latter a Quaker early settler, who entertained Penn 
at his house, Essex House, the site at least of which 
had been formerly occupied, and the house probably 
built, by the daughter of the Swedish Governor 
Printz, Armgart Pappagoya. Chester Creek, Up- 
land Kill, or Mecoponacka was called by Lindstrom 
Tequirasi (otherwise Techoherassi), from the Indian 
name of a property bordering on it and fronting on 
the Delaware, which had been patented by Oele 
Stille, and was later the home of Rev. L. Carolus. 
This Stille property, however, some of it marsh or 
flooded land, extended northeastward probably from 



Ridley Creek to Crum Kill, and Lindstrom seems to 
have wrongly named it Stille's or Priest's Kill, being 
the alternate names of Ridley Creek, and the stream 
was most likely called also after Stille's property. 
The streams which give volume to Chester Creek rise 
some of them in Chester County, flowing through 
several townships of Delaware County, and furnish- 
ing a good deal of water-power to factories and mills. 
Many of Penn's thrifty followers — Caleb Pusey, the 
Sharplesses, Crosby, Brassy, Sandeland, etc. — took 
up land on it or adjacent to it. Ridley Creek and 
Crum Kill, the next streams northeast of Chester, 
were also important for mill purposes. The neck of 
land at the debouch of these creeks upon the Dela- 
ware was marshy, and this was mostly occupied by 
Swedes. Mattson, Van Culen, Johnson, Hendrik- 
son, Cornelis, Mortenson, Nielson are names of set- 
tlers along this water-front from Ridley Creek to 
Tinnecum, while back of them, on the water-shade, 
we find the Quakers took up large tracts, — Simcock, 
Harvey, Maddock, Steadman, Ashcom, Hallowell, 
Whitacre, etc. The Swedes called the settlements 
northeast of Finland "Upland," then came "Car- 
coen's Hook" lands, then " Tennakong." Amesland 
comprised a portion of Darby and Ridley townships. 
Crum Kill was, as Lindstrom interprets, La RiviSre 
Courbee, or Crooked Kill, otherwise Paperack or 
Peskohockon in Indian dialect. These names on 
the Delaware present almost insuperable difficulties 
from their variety and confusion, the fact that the 
Indians seem to have had no standard titles for their 
streams, and the want of any rule in guiding the at- 
tempts of Europeans to give a phonetic interpretation 
to the Indians' indistinct, guttural pronunciation. 
Amesland Creek (Amesland, or Amas-land, is said 
to mean the " midwives' land") was formed by the 
junction of Darby and Cobb's Creeks. It flowed 
southeast into the Delaware, separating Tinnecum 
from the mainland and Amesland. But at this 
point we find a network equally of names and 
rivers, all equally running into swamp and confu- 
sion. The delta of the Schuylkill begins here, and 
here also Philadelphia begins, for, though Bow Creek 
is the formal county line at the Delaware, the actual 
boundary is Darby Creek, after it has united with 
Minquas Kill, Cobb's Creek, and the true Amesland 
Kill, the Muckinpattus or Mokornipates Kill, a 
smaller stream than the Darby, flowing into it be- 
tween its junction with Cobb's Creek and its mouth. 
The topography of this lower part of Philadelphia 
is peculiar and must not be slighted. There have 
been great changes in the face of the country, in its 
levels and contour, and in the direction and beds of 
its water-courses since the days of the Swedes and the 
early Quakers. Some streams have disappeared, 
some have changed their direction, nearly all have 
been reduced in volume and depth by the natural silt, 
the annual washing down of hills, by the demands 
of industry for water-power, the construction of mill- 



HISTORY OP PHILADELPHIA. 



dams and mill-races and bridges, the emptying of 
manufacturing refuse from factories, saw-pits, and 
tan-yards, and by the grading and sewerage necessary 
in the building of a great city. In this process old 
landmarks and ancient contours are not respected, 
the picturesque yields to utility, and the face of nature 
is transformed to meet the exigencies of uniform 
grades, levels, and drainage. The Board of Health, 
the Police Department, the City Commissioners, and 
the Department of Highways have no bowels of com- 
passion for the antiquarian and the poet. They are 
the slaves of order, of hygiene, of transportation, of 
progress. 

Darby and Cobb's Creeks both rise in the slate beds 
of the upper corner of Delaware and the adjacent 
townships of Montgomery County and flow eastward 
towards the Delaware, each augmented in volume as 
they descend through the mica, slate, and gneiss 
regions parallel to each other. After they reach the 
margin of the " water-shade,'' which is here as far 
inland as Heyvilleon the Darby andtheBurd Asylum 
on Cobb's Creek, the two streams approach each 
other in the diluvial lowlands, uniting just below the 
towns of Darby and Paschallville. The common 
stream, now called the Darby, flows east with serpen- 
tine course until it touches the edge of the alluvium 
and marsh section, when it turns more towards the 
left, and with two or three sweeping curves reaches 
the Delaware. Just after the turn is made the Darby 
receives the waters of the Amesland or Muckinpattus 
Kill, and the neck of land between was well known to 
the Swedes under the name of Carcoen's Hook, a 
name it still retains. 1 This section at the bend, alow, 
marshy flat, is cut by several canal-like streams or 
guts, forming the two islands, Hay and Smith's. The 
neck was early occupied by the Swedes, and the names 
of the Boons (Bondes), Mortonsons, Keens, Streckets, 
Cornells, Jonsens, Mounsens, Jorans, Petersons, Hans- 
sens, Joccums, Urians, and Cocks may be found on 
all the old land-plats of that region. Darby Creek 
was called by the Indians Nyecks, Mohorhoottink, 
or Mukruton ; Cobb's Creek, named after William 
Cobb, a contemporary of Penn, was also called Kar- 
kus or Carcoen's Creek by the Swedes, a corruption 
of the Indian name of Karakung, or Kakarakonk, 
and by the English, Mill Creek. This name came 
from the old Swedes' mill, built by Governor Printz, 
at the ford where the old Blue Bell tavern and Pas- 
challville now stand, the crossing of the Darby road. 
Cobb took the mill after Penn came in, and gave his 
name to the stream. The mill was used by a wide 
circuit of people, from the Swedes at Upland and 
Tinnecum to the Welsh at Haverford and Merion 
and the first Quakers in Bucks County. From its 
bend towards the left to its mouth Darby Creek flowed 
west and south of Tinnecum Island, dividing it from 



iCarcoen'H Hook, Kiilkonhutten, place of wild turkeys. Culcoen's 
Hook was tliunec.k former] liy the junction of Crum Kill and Little Crinn 
Kill. 



the main land. This tract is all alluvium, except one 
spot of firm ground, where the underlying gneiss rock 
comes boldly to the surface. Tinnecum, Tennakong, 
Tutenaiung was the site selected by the Swedish 
Governor, Johann Printz, for his fort of Nya Gothe- 
borg, and for his residence of Printz Hall. The 
channel used by vessels at that time probably flowed 
on the west side of the Delaware, in which case 
Printz's fort commanded it. Off Tinnecum in the 
Delaware was a long, narrow sand and mud and marsh 
spit, designated by the name of Little Tinnecum 
Island, and somewhat above it, in the river channel, 
was Hog Island, as it is now called, but which the 
Indians knew as Quistquonck, or Kwistkonk, and the 
Swedes dignified with the title of Keyser Island, or 
Iledes Empereurs, as Lindstrom explains on his map. 
Tinnecum Island is cut in half by a kill of many 
forks, uniting it with the Darby, and traversing the 
island in several directions. This stream is known 
as Plum or Plom Hook, and its branches are vari- 
ously called Long Hook, Grom Creek, and Middle 
Creek. On the Delaware side of Tinnecum were 
situated Printz's Hall and the first Swedish Church 
and churchyard on the'Delaware, consecrated in 1646. 
This spot is now occupied by the Philadelphia Quar- 
antine station and the Lazaretto Hospital, the site of 
the ancient fort and grounds belonging to it being 
adjacent to what is now Tinnecum Hotel. 

On the right or east side of Darby Creek, midway 
between the junction with the Karakung and the 
sharp bend of the creek to the left, Minquas Kill en- 
ters it. This once broad tidal estuary, which united 
the Schuylkill and the Delaware with the Darby by 
a four-pronged fork, is differently called Mincus and 
Mingoes Creek, and derives its name from the Indian 
nation, the Iroquois, whom the Delawares called 
Minquas or Mingoes. The Susquehannocks, who 
were of this race, frequented these swamps, probably 
to facilitate their military operations against the war- 
like Nanticokes of the Delaware peninsula. The 
Swedes called this kill with its southernmost fork 
Church Creek, because they used it in going by boat 
from Kingsessing, Karakung, and the islands near 
the Schuylkill to the church at Tinnecum. At the 
elbow of Darby Creek, where it turns to encircle 
Tinnecum, it is joined by Bow Creek, another tidal 
estuary, which connects it with the Delaware op- 
posite Hog Island. Bow Creek or Kill, the south- 
ern boundary of Philadelphia, was called by Lind- 
strom Boke Kyi, Beech Creek, and also Kyrke Kill, 
or Church Creek, as it was another route to Tini- 
cum. Bow Creek, with Church Creek, Bonde's Creek, 
and another small kill, one of the mouths of the 
Schuylkill, combined with the Minquas Kill, the 
Delaware, and the Schuylkill to form three small 
islands, more or less entirely marsh land and liable 
to floods and tide overflow. These were Minquas 
' or Andrew Bonde's Island, Aharommuny Island, and 
Schuylkill Island, the first occupied by Andrew 



TOPOGRAPHY. 



Boone or Bonde, and the other two by Peter Cock, 
both of them Swedes and among the earliest settlers. 
All this region is now fast, firm land, and the streams 
we have been describing, once so considerable, have 
dwindled into insignificance or disappeared. The 
Swedes called the district east of Darby Creek and 
Minquas Kill, Tennacong ; that west of Minquas Kill, 
between Cobb's Creek and the Schuylkill, was King- 
sesse or Kingsessing, a Swedish hamlet, where the 
Duke of York's court used sometimes to hold its 
sessions instead of at Upland, and west of that, and 
divided from Kingsessing by the Darby road, was the 
district called Arunnamink. Above Quistkonk or 
Hog Island, and immediately at the mouth of the 
Schuylkill, on the west, was Mud Island, a bank of 
tide-washed alluvium, where Mud Fort was built 
and offered such a gallant resistance to the English 
during the Revolutionary war. This island is now 
fast and solid and united to the mainland. 

We have now reached the point of junction of the 
Schuylkill and the Delaware Rivers. The Schuyl- 
kill was called by the Indians indifferently Mana- 
yunk, Manajungh (Swedish spelling), Manaiunk, and 
Lenni Bikbi (having some allusion to the linden-tree 
or its bark). Lindstrom terms it the Menejackse Kill 
(another Indian name), but also designates it as the 
Skiar-kill, elk (or) Linde River. Shiar-hill in Swed- 
ish would be " Brawling Creek," a derivation no 
better than that from the Dutch of hidden or " Skulk- 
ing Creek," from its insignificance and obscurity of 
its mouth. On Lindstrom's map, indeed, the river is 
marked as if it were no bigger than Crum Kill or Plum 
Hook. It is really, however, a stream of extensive 
drainage, having its source in the coal-fields west of 
the Blue Mountains, descending by Pottsville, Read- 
ing, and Norristown, by beautiful valleys, to the Dela- 
ware. Its chief tributaries — Maiden Creek, Mana- 
tawny, Monocasy, Tulpehocking, Little Schuylkill, 
Norwegian, Mill Creek, Perkiomen, and Wissahiccon 
— flow through a goodly expanse of territory. From 
its junction with the Delaware to the Falls above 
Fairmount no important affluents are received by the 
Schuylkill upon either side. Opposite the mouth of 
Minquas Kill there is still a small stream draining 
through the swamp, called Sepakin Kill, and above it 
the Piney or Pinneyes(an Indian name, interpreted 
to mean "sleepy"), a small creek, emptied into the 
east side, at the site of the Swedish fort and trad- 
ing-post, Korsholm, now occupied by the Point Breeze 
Gas-Works. Drainage has obliterated this stream ; 
the old Passayunk road used to border it. Nearly 
opposite, marking the boundary line between King- 
sessing and Arunnamunk, the Inkoren Kill (named 
after Andries Inkhooren, a Swedish landholder) 
flowed from the west side of Schuylkill. The next 
stream on that side which was important enough to 
bear a name (excepting the runlets called Botanic 
Creek and Peach Creek, on the property of Peter 
Joccum and Moens Jonson, which afterwards John 



Bartram owned) was Mill Creek, abrook large enough 
to support two mills. It rose in Upper Merion town- 
ship. Near its mouth was the property of Hans Moens, 
containing such an eligible mill-seat that the Upland 
court gave the owner the option of erecting a mill 
upon it or surrendering the land to his neighbors 
who would build. Gray's Ferry bridge is three blocks 
below the mouth of Mill Creek. This ferry was for 
the convenience of travelers to Darby by the Darby 
road. In the neck between Mill Creek and the Schuyl- 
kill is situated Woodlands Cemetery, which was laid 
out upon the fine grounds of William Hamilton's 
country-seat, called " The Woodlands." Mill Creek, 
in the course of its descent from Merion, passes through 
the grounds of the Pennsylvania Hospital for the 
Insane and a corner of the Cathedral Cemetery. 
This stream, now obliterated, was once romantic and 
attractive. A branch of it, called George's Run, nearly 
touches the southwestern extremity of Fairmount 
Park, and bisects Hestonville. In the part of Phila- 
delphia (Twenty-seventh Ward) we have been speak- 
ing of only one brook of importance — Thomas' Run 
— flows into Cobb's Creek. Beyond the Almshouse 
grounds, on the north, is Beaver Creek, then no more 
streams on the west side of the Schuylkill until Fair- 
mount Park is reached. On the east side used to be 
Minnow Run, flowing from Bush Hill through Logan 
Square, and reaching the Schuylkill by a winding 
route, in the course of which two or three spring- 
heads lent their waters to it. Another small brook 
emptied into the east side of the Schuylkill below 
Fairmount; a third, Darkwoods Run, below Lemon 
Hill; a fourth, Falls Run, reached it at the Falls. 

About half a mile beyond the Falls the Schuyl- 
kill receives the waters of the romantic Wissahiccon. 
The Quakers gave this stream, which has delighted 
both poets and artists, aud is the most charming acces- 
sory to the beauties of Fairmount Park, the unromantic 
name of Whitpaine's Creek, from the original settler 
on its bank, John Whitpaine, who built a " great 
house" in Philadelphia, too big for his humility, and 
in the large front room of which the Provincial 
Assembly used to meet. The Indian meaning of 
Wissahiccon, however, is said to be '" catfish," and 
certainly " Catfish Creek" is not susceptible of adap- 
tation to poetical forms of speech. The Wissahiccon 
rose in Montgomery County, in the same water-shed 
which supplies the sources of Stony Run, the Skip- 
pack, Pennepacka Creek, and the southwestern branch 
of the Neshaminy. Its chief branches were Paper- 
Mill Creek, on which the father of the astronomer 
Rittenhouse built the first paper-mill in Pennsyl- 
vania, a mill that supplied the presses both of Wil- 
liam Bradford, of Philadelphia, and Christopher Sau r, 
of Gerniantown, and Cresheim Creek, named for the 
Rhenish town from which the earlier settlers of Ger- 
mantown came. The northwest corner of Philadel- 
phia approaches, but does not touch, the banks of the 
Perkiomen. 



8 



HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA.. 



The Delaware River, the eastern boundary of Phil- 
adelphia, which the Indians called by several names 
not having any especial relevancy, 1 rises on the border 
of Greene and Delaware Counties, N. Y., on the 
western slope of the Catskill Mountains, in two 
branches, the Popacton and the Oquago, which unite 
at Hancock, on the line between Pennsylvania and 
New York: It flows southeast, continuing to form the 
boundary between those States, until it reaches Port 
Jervis, where it turns southwest, flowing at the west- 
ern base of the Kittatinny Mountains until it bursts 
through these at the Water Gap. At Easton it re- 
ceives the volume of the Lehigh River, and from the 
Water Gap to Bordentown speeds southeastward as 
if intent upon reaching the Atlantic at Barnegat or 
Egg Harbor. At Bordentown it encounters the bluffs, 
however, and turns southwestward again, until at 
New Castle it resumes its seaward direction, soon 
widening into Delaware Bay. Between Port Jervis 
and the mouth of Naaman's Creek it is the boundary 
separating New Jersey from Pennsylvania; below 
that it divides New Jersey from Delaware. It has 
many tributaries within the limits of Philadelphia, 
besides inclosing several islands in the arms of its 
channel. The first of these islands above the mouth 
of the Schuylkill is that low-lying mud-bank (as it 
used to be) called League Island, a tract of over nine 
hundred acres, which during the civil war the city of 
Philadelphia purchased and presented to the United 
States government for a navy-yard, in order to expe- 
dite the removal of the existing navy-yard from its 
place on the river-front in South wark. League Island is 
separated from the mainland by a narrow sort of canal 
called the Back Channel. Into this Back Channel 
empties Hollandaer's Creek, named for Peter Hol- 
landaer, second Swedish Governor on the Delaware. 
This stream also flows into the Delaware at the be- 
ginning of Oregon Avenue. It is a tidal estuary 
traversing what was once a swamp, and is consider- 
ably diverted from its original course, since there 
seems to be no doubt that it once crossed the neck, 
also uniting the Schuylkill as well as the Back Channel 
with the Delaware. The Swedish records make men- 
tion of Rosamond's or Roseman's Kill, which cannot 
now be traced with certainty, beyond the fact that it 
was one of the branches of Hollandaer's Creek. Hay 
Creek was another of these intersecting streams; a 
third bore several names, among which were Dam, 
Hell, Holt, Float, or Little Hollandaer; Jones' Creek 
was a fourth, and Malebore fifth of these marshland 
conduits for the tide. Malebore's Creek was called 
by the name of an Indian chief; it was also called 
Shakanoning, or Shakaning. The Indian name for 
Rosamond's Creek was Kikitchimus, meaning the 
woodchuck. Hollandaer's Creek and its branches 
made two islands of the extremity of the peninsula, 
the one on the Delaware side being originally called 

1 See Chapter III. fov tlie n:iinefc Jtnd dates nf disci ivet'iefi, etc. 



by the Swedes by a name which Lindstrom interprets 
as He de Rasins, Grape Island, now Greenwich 
Island, and the one on the Schuylkill side Manasonk 
or Manayunk Island. Careful study of the old sur- 
veys and narratives will enable all these points of 
interest in the southwestern necks to be made out with 
sufficient accuracy, and their relations to one another 
determined. Moyamensic (Moyamensing) marsh, 
which also had a kill of its own, we read, comprised 
sixty-four acres, lying between Hollandaer's and Hay 
Creek. This latter creek was 93 perches south of Hol- 
landaer's and Rosamond's Creeks, 158 perches south 
of Hay. Bonde's Island is called 1| Swedish miles — 
8.31 English miles — from the old Swedish Church at 
Wicaco ; Matson's Ford, 17J English miles from that 
central point of Swedish associations ; Kingsessing, 
5 miles ; Carcoen's Hook, 9.9 miles. 

Dock Creek, the next stream towards the northeast 
after passing Hollandaer's, was in many respects the 
most interesting of all the Delaware tributaries within 
the limits of Philadelphia. A street now covers its 
bed, -a. wharf marks the place where it emptied into 
the Delaware, but its course may still be distinctly 
traced. In fact, the Philadelphia of the primitive 
Quakers was built quite as much with reference to 
this stream as to Penn's plans and the plats of Sur- 
veyor Holme. The Indians called it Coocanocon, but 
the name of Dock Creek was shorter and more descrip- 
tive from the time of the English settlement, for the 
obvious reason that the stream was used as a dock or 
quay for all the smaller craft. Boat-yards and tan- 
yards were established along its banks, it was encum- 
bered with depots for lumber, and the first landing- 
place and the first tavern of Philadelphia were 
planted at its mouth. In those early days it was 
thought to be a good thing for the well-to-do mer- 
chant of the Quaker City to build his mansion on 
the slope in sight of the creek, his garden and lawn 
extending down to its green banks. One of its 
branches rose west of Fifth Street and north of 
Market Street, another began west of Fifth Street 
between Walnut and Prune Streets, the two uniting 
about where the Girard Bank now stands. At Third 
Street the creek widened into a cove, receiving here 
another branch, which flowed into it from the rear 
of Society Hill. Penn and the early inhabitants 
were anxious to have this creek become a perma- 
nent dock, but it lost its usefulness from being filled 
up and made shallow with rubbish and tan-bark, it 
became foul and unwholesome from accumulated 
filth, and the doctors raised an outcry against it as 
the fruitful source of malaria, typhus and yellow 
fever, and the summer diseases of children, so that 
in 1784 an act was passed requiring it to be arched 
over. At the northeastern mouth of this creek was 
the sandy beach known as Blue Anchor Tavern land- 
ing, for several years the chief public wharf the city 
had. Opposite the wharves on the Delaware front 
between Fitzwater and Arch Streets, and in mid- 



TOPOGRAPHY. 



channel of the river, was one long, narrow island, 
since separated into two by a canal. Smith's Island 
and Windmill Island, as the upper and lower ones 
were subsequently named, are really but one island 
of gradual growth and importance. On the maps 
of Thomas Holme, the first surveyor, the island 
is put down as bars or shoals in the river's bed, ex- 
tending from opposite Spruce Street to a point below 
Cedar Street. The accumulation of sand, silt, and 
refuse brought down by the ice and by spring floods 
united these bars and flats and lifted them above the 
surface and the overflow of tides. They became fast 
land, and the new island was leased unto an enter- 
prising man. John Harding built a wharf and a wind- 
mill on it, and it took its name from the latter structure. 
The island was not exactly a permanent establish- 
ment for some time, as it washed away at one end as 
fast as it grew at another ; however, bathing resorts 
were stationed upon it, willow-trees were planted and 
flourished on it, and Thomas Smith, an old occupant, 
became so identified with it that it finally took his 
name. A canal was cut through the island in 1838 
to promote the rapid transit of ferry-boats, and rail- 
road companies now own the southern section, that 
to the north of the canal being called at present Ridg- 
way Park, and used as a public resort. The present 
Treaty Island, which belongs to New Jersey and lies 
in the bed of the Delaware opposite Kensington, was 
patented as early as 1684 by Thomas Fairman (an 
early Quaker, in whose house Penn spent the first 
winter in Philadelphia), under the name of Shacka- 
maxon Island, of which name Treaty Island is a re- 
flection, Shackamaxon or Kensington being the place 
where Penn's reputed treaty with the Delawares was 
negotiated. After Fairman's death it was called 
Petty's Island, from John Petty, the then owner. 

Willow Street, as laid out at present, represents 
part of the bed of the stream called Pegg's Run, 
named from Daniel Pegg, who owned extensive tracts 
of meadow, marsh, and upland in the Northern Lib- 
erties on the Delaware border. The Indian title of 
this stream was Cohoquinoque ; one of its branches 
rose about the neighborhood of Fairmount Avenue 
and Fifteenth Street, the other west of Eleventh be- 
tween this avenue and Green Street ; at Vine Street 
east of Tenth Street they united to flow northeast to 
the Delaware. Much of the ground bounding on this 
stream was marshy and alluvian, liable, to be flooded 
both by tides and freshets, and requiring dykes and 
ditches to fit it for cultivation even as meadow. At 
the next bend of the Delaware above the mouth of 
Pegg's Run the river received the waters of Cohock- 
sink Creek, a stream composed of Mill Creek (so called 
from its being the site of the mill built by Penn, where 
the Globe Mills were later) and the Coozaliquenaque, 
rising above Jefferson Street near Broad, where the 
Gratz property lay. Cohocksink (Cuwenasink) is 
supposed to mean "pine grove." About the north- 
ern limits of Kensington another kill flowed into the 



Delaware from the west, by the English called Gun- 
ner's Run, after Gunner Rambo, a Swede settler who 
held adjacent lands ; the Indian name was Tumanara- 
maning; its sources were, found on the west of Fair 
Hill, near Harrowgate, where was a mineral spring, 
and near Nicetown and the old Cedar Grove property. 

At " Point-no- Point" is the mouth of Frankford 
Creek, the product of the Wingohocking, Tacony, 
Little Tacony, and Freaheatah Creeks. The Swedes 
called the whole stream Tacony (Taokanink), and 
gave the same name to all the districts north and east 
of Wicaco, or, as some say, and the tax -lists of the 
Dutch and Duke of York's Governors show, from 
Carcoen's Hook to the Falls of the Delaware. The 
source of the name is doubtful ; some take it from 
Tekene, a Lenape word supposed to mean " inhab- 
ited." On Lindstrom's map the Swedish and French 
equivalents are Aleskyns Kylen, " La Riviere des An- 
guilles ecorchees," Skinned Eels River. The Wingo- 
hocking (Winge-hacking) is thought to mean " a good 
place for planting." This stream is also called " Lo- 
gan's Run," because it flows by Stenton, the country- 
seat of James Logan, Penn's secretary ; it rises near 
Mount Airy, and the Tacony in Montgomery County. 
Indian dialects afford the philologists the same 
chances to disagree which they seek in more polished 
tongues. A small stream rising in Dublin township 
and entering the Delaware near the United States 
Arsenal staggers under the triplicate alias of Sissin- 
iockisink, Wissinoming, and Little Wahank, derived, 
says one, from Wischanmunk, " where we were 
scared ;" says another, from Wissachgamen, " vine- 
yard." ' 

Above Frankford Creek what is called Dublin 
Creek empties into the Delaware, <i stream which is 
the product of four small forks, and which is often 
called by its Indian name of Pennipacka or Penni- 
ceacka. Two miles north of this is the Poquessing, 
the northeast boundary of Philadelphia, a stream 



1 Very little dependence can be placed on the spelling or interpretation 
of these Indian words, and particularly little upon attempts to get at the 
meaning of Indian names of things and places by analyBiHand recom posi- 
tion of their roots. Some illustration of this fact may be found in the vo- 
cabularies collected by Maj.Ebenezer Denny, and inserted in his journal, 
which has been lately published by the Pennsylvania Historical Society. 
Maj. Denny collected these words in Ohio in 1785-80, while at Forts Mc- 
intosh and Finney, from Delawares. One gives for " very bad" the word 
machelesfio, the other matla-icmtih ; the words are similar, but the conso- 
nants differ. Probably Maj. Denny heard the same word each time, but the 
pronunciation was not distinct enough to enable him to catch the proper 
form of spelling. So, again, "woman" is in one place ochgwe, in an- 
other auquawan; evidently the same word, with the same difficulty in 
writing it down phonetically. " Sleep" in one place is nepaywah, in the 
other caaweela: "pipe," ohquakay and hobocaw ; the numerals are guttee,, 
or necooLay ; necJishaa, or nee.sicay ; nochJiaa, or vtethway ; nevaa,ovneaway, 
etc. When it comes to give these Indian sounds an English form and 
interpretation after reaching us through a Swedish, Dutch, or French 
medium, the difficulty is increased almost immeasurably, and a decent 
Bltepticism is the only defense behind which criticism can shelter itself 
if it would avoid absurdities and escape glaring contradictions. It is for 
this reason that in this chapter Indian words and their translations are 
treated as allegations rather than facts ; and this will continue to be done 
throughout. 



10 



HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA. 



coming down from Montgomery County by a circui- 
tous course, in which it receives the waters of Byberry 
Creek and several minor brooks. The ancient spell- 
ing of this name is Poetquessingh and Pouquessinge, 
interpreted by Lindstrom as "Riviere de Kahamons," 
or (as a variation) " Riviere des Dragons.'' 

We describe an eligible farm as being well watered, 
and having due proportions of meadow, intervale, 
upland, and forest, with a various and undulating 
surface, all susceptible of tillage. By well watered a 
farmer means " water in every field." The descrip- 
tion suits the topography of the site of Philadelphia 
exactly. If the city as Penn found it had been di- 
vided into twenty-five-acre lots, it would have been 
so proportioned as to have water in every field. A 
perfect network of small brooks and spring-heads 
inland joined one another on their way to the main 
trunk arteries, the Delaware and the Schuylkill. Their 
courses were various, their volumes now small now 
great, and the surface of the city's site was like a 
complicated map, yet the general topography of Phil- 
adelphia obeyed the general rule of the Atlantic 
States, — streams flowing from northwest to southeast, 
hills ranging from southwest to northeast. In this 
case the Delaware from Burlington, in its changed 
course, represented the ocean, the common receiver, 
and the Schuylkill flowed southeast into it after tak- 
ing up the small streams on its eastern side, which 
were prevented by the water-shed from reaching the 
Delaware directly. The intersection of the valleys 
between hills by the valleys following water-courses 
apparently cut up the surface into detached eleva- 
tions and depressions, but there was still a regular 
rise from tide-level at the Schuylkill delta to three 
hundred feet in Bristol, and three hundred to four 
hundred feet in Germantown and Roxborough, and 
there was besides a regular " water-shade" at the 
margin of the alluvium, beginning at Point Breeze on 
the Schuylkill, and tending northeast to Society Hill. 
From this point the " water-shade" ran flush with 
the bank of the Delaware, except where the stream 
valleys cut through it, up to near Kensington, where 
it receded inland for some distance. The first spot in 
the southeast where the underlying gneiss rock broke 
through the alluvium so as to form an elevation was 
at a point midway in Kingsessing, east of Minquas 
Kill. Here, at a place called Blakeley, and near by 
the old Bowling Green, was a considerable hill, a 
spur repeated opposite on the west side of Darby 
Creek, and again just by the mouth of the Schuylkill, 
where the old pest-house used to be. This was 
Peter Cock's land at one time, and his house may 
have been here. The next elevation on Cobb's Creek 
was a spur adjacent to the bridge at the Blue Bell 
Tavern, called Pleasant Prospect. St. James' Church 
was built on it. This elevation corresponded with 
that which began on the east side of the Schuylkill 
below Gray's Ferry. It was the beginning of the 
"water-shade" which extended east toward South- 



wark. From Society Hill the bluffs on the Dela- 
ware front were continuous, except where streams 
cut through, with an elevation of fifteen to fifty feet, 
averaging about thirty feet. A line drawn from the 
Blue Bell Tavern bridge to Southwark would touch 
Point Breeze, which is the beginning of continuous 
rising ground on the Schuylkill. The Passayunk 
road, midway between Schuylkill Lower. Ferry and 
Cedar (now South) Street, passed over another con- 
siderable elevation. The plateau of the original 
Philadelphia laid out by Penn was not broken much 
except on its eastern and western sides, where it came 
to the rivers. On the line of the Northern Liberties, 
however, Philadelphia County showed a sort of ter- 
race, extending from Cobb's Creek almost to the 
Delaware, and rising into occasional domes, as at 
Fairmount and Bush Hill, with corresponding eleva- 
tions west of the Schuylkill. North of this terrace 
another rose still higher, beginning with Green Hill 
on Cobb's Creek (the Morris property), then, as we 
pass eastward, George's Hill, Lansdowne, Belmont, 
and Mount Prospect, and east of Schuylkill, Fair- 
mount, Lemon Hill, Mount Pleasant, Edgely Point, 
Vineyard Hill, Laurel Hill, Green Hill, and several 
other elevations. From the spurs of Lower Merion 
township another terrace stretched eastward, having 
among its domes various gentle rises, but not so 
steep or abrupt as near the Schuylkill River. Still 
another terrace rose to the northward, conspicuous 
in which range were Mount Airy and Chestnut 
Hill. 

The hills and streams are included in the class of 
natural landmarks. Roads are artificial landmarks, 
which nearly always are found to be as old as any set- 
tlement, and almost as enduring. A certain habit of 
use clings to all old-established roads, making a change 
in their bed very difficult. We have elsewhere spoken 
to some extent of the oldest roads in Philadelphia 
County. The first of these was the Darby road, 
though it is possible that there was a still older road of 
the Swedes from the Lower Schuylkill Ferry between 
Tinnecum and Wicaco. The Darby road crossed 
Cobb's Creek at the Swedes' mill and Blue Bell Tav- 
ern; it ran northeast towards the Schuylkill, crossing 
it at Gray's Ferry, but originally, it is supposed, only 
at Middle Ferry, where High Street touched the 
river. The old York road followed the bed of this 
road from Upland, proceeding through Market Street 
(High Street) in Philadelphia to Front Street, and 
thence by the bed of the road to Bristol. Another 
route was to go north by way of Second Street to the 
junction of the Germantown and Frankford roads, and 
follow the latter. Later the York road followed 
the margin of the Delaware from Chester, crossing 
Tinnecum, and crossing the Schuylkill by the Lower 
Ferry, where it could either pass eastward, striking 
the Moyamensing road to Wicaco on the Greenwich 
and Gloucester Point road, or else follow the Passa- 
vunk road to Dock Creek draw-bridge, and so get into 



TOPOGKAPHY. 



11 



Second or Front Street. What was called the " Fed- 
eral road," from Gray's Ferry to Southwark (to meet 
the Darby and Great Southern road), was not laid off 
until 1788. The " Baltimore Post and Stage Road," 
however, long preferred the line from Middle Ferry 
(Market Street bridge) to the Blue Bell Ford. AtMid- 
dle Ferry (or Woodlands, just west of it) the Chadd's 
Ford road began, running southwest, crossing Cobb's 
Creek where the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Balti- 
more Railroad now crosses it, and thence to Kellysville. 
This road, now Baltimore Avenue in Philadelphia, 
became Delaware County turnpike after crossing the 
county line. The Westchester road ran due west 
from Middle Ferry, on the line of the present Market 
Street, for some distance. The road to Lancaster ran 
northwest from the same ferry, crossing Cobb's Creek 
at West Haverford. The Haverford road ran north- 
ward above the Lancaster and the West Chester roads, 
passing through Haddington. The ManatawDy or 
Ridge road, running from the corner of Vine and 
Ninth Streets, in Philadelphia, to Norristown, in 
Montgomery County, had its counterpart in the River 
road, which started from the Lancaster road and fol- 
lowed the west bank of the Schuylkill into Montgom- 
ery County. From Vine Street and Schuylkill Front 
Street a road proceeded to Fairmount, then dimin- 
ished to the narrow dimensions of a country lane, 
turned northward, rounding Lemon Hill, and .cutting 
the Ridge road at Turner's lane, which latter extended 
to the Germantown road north of Fair Hill. There 
were several minor roads, all now streets, between the 
Germantown and Ridge roads north of Turner's lane, 
and between that and the county bounds. The Ger- 
mantown road passed from the end of North Second 
Street through the Northern Liberties to Fair Hill, 
nearly due north. Just beyond this elevation the 
Township Line road left the Ridge road at the old Bo- 
tanic Garden, and went northwest in a straight line, 
dividing Roxborough township from Germantown. 
This road crossed the Wissahiccon at Dewees' mill and 
went to Perkiomen Town. Another Township Line 
road crossed the Germantown road at Logan's Hill, 
and the Wissahiccon at Weiss' mill, going thence to the 
Lutheran Church at Barren Hill, where it intersected 
the Ridge road. At Naglee's Hill the Germantown 
road parted with Fisher's lane, running northeast 
across the Old York road. At the market-house in 
Germantown Indian Queen lane led off southwest; 
parallel to it, a little more north, was School-house 
lane, opposite which Church lane branched off north- 
eastward to Lukens' mill, where it struck the Lime- 
kiln road running north. Farther up Germantown 
road, at Green Tree Tavern, was Meeting-House lane 
running east, and Rittenhouse Mill lane running west; 
the road to Abington crossed at Chew's house ; Trul- 
linger's lane and Gorgas' lane at Beggarstown ; Mil- 
ler's lane went east from Mount Airy ; Allen's lane 
west from the same point; Mermaid lane east and 
Kerper's and Weiss' Mill lanes west from Chestnut 



Hill. At this point the Germantown road forked, one 
branch going towards Reading, the other towards 
Bethlehem. Mermaid lane going northeast inter- 
sected the Limekiln road, and the two became the 
road to Skippack, a more easterly branch running 
towards Bethlehem. The old York road (one branch 
of it) followed the Germantown road to Sunville, and 
thence went north by Miles Town through Bristol 
township. The Frankford road ran eastward from 
Front Street, passing farther east by Harrowgate and 
Holmesburg. It had many branches and feeders 
leading to various points in Bucks and Montgomery 
Counties. 

The sites of forts afford another means for clearing 
up the topography of any locality. They are ordi- 
narily put in commanding places, where lines of travel 
or a wide sweep of country may be kept under con- 
trol of their guns. The Dutch, the Swedes, the Eng- 
lish, and our own countrymen have all erected forts 
at different epochs within the present limits of Phila- 
delphia. The history of these forts belongs to subse- 
quent chapters, as part of the regular account of 
events to be narrated. Their sites, however, are part 
of the topographical history of the city. The earliest 
of these structures was Fort Beversrede, erected by 
the Dutch, and, it is affirmed, before the Swedes es- 
tablished themselves upon the river. It was built 
where it would be convenient for the beaver trade 
with the Indians, and it must have served that pur- 
pose, for we find that the Swedish Governor Printz 
went the length of building a trading-house directly 
in front of it, not a biscuit-toss away, in order to de- 
stroy its utility. Fort Beversrede stood on the east 
bank of the Schuylkill, in the district of Passayunk, 
opposite the debouch of Minquas Kill, where the 
river-bank begins to rise, beyond the Penrose Ferry 
bridge. The Susquehanna Indians appear to have 
used Minquas Kill to come out from their hunting- 
grounds, and a trading-post at that point would 
naturally attract them. The Delawares and Iroquois 
also came down the Schuylkill in their canoes, 
making a portage at the Falls. The second Swedish 
fort was built at Nya Gotheborg, or New Gottenburg, 
on that outcrop of gneiss rock which gave a patch of 
dry land to Tinnecum Island. The Swedes imitated 
the Dutch in building a fort in Passayunk, on the 
property given by Queen Christina to Lieut. Sven 
Schute. It was on the east side of the Schuylkill 
above Beversrede, probably on the rising ground at 
Point Breeze. Manayunk, another Swedish stockade 
on the Schuylkill, " on Manayunk Island," probably 
near thejunction with the Delaware. Fort Gripsholm 
was built by Governor Printz on an island in the 
Schuylkill, " within gunshot of its mouth." Its site 
is disputed, but Mr. Westcott conjectures that from 
the Dutch descriptions of it by Andrew Hudde it 
was most probably built at the mouth of Minquas 
Kill, on the west bank of the Schuylkill, on Province 
Island. The block-house at Wicaco, which was con- 



12 



HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA. 



verted into a church in 1677, became the site of the 
venerable- church Gloria Dei of the Swedes, and was 
convenient to the settlers of that race in the district 
of Passayunk and Moyamensing. This spot was the 
first rising ground on the Delaware above the mouth 
of the Schuylkill, and as such was a favorite point of 
defense against foes expected to come up the river. 
As such it was used in 1747 when the " Association 
Battery,'' the first fortification of the Quaker City, 
was erected by a committee at the time of the 
renewal of hostilities between France and Great 
Britain. The Friends would not build forts, but the 
Penn family promised the artillery if the citizens 
would erect the breastworks, and the Association 
Battery was built with this understanding by " the 
Association for General Defense," part of the funds 
for it being raised by a lottery. About the same time 
and by the same devices another battery was erected 
upon Society Hill, on the bluff between Lombard and 
Cedar Streets. During the Revolution a fort was 
erected on Mud Island, in the Delaware, off the shore 
of Kingsessing and between Hog Island and Province 
Island. This fort was begun in 1773 by the Province 
of Pennsylvania. It was a position commanding the 
channel of the river and the chevaux-de-frise between 
it and Red Bank. Subsequently to the Revolution it 
was called Fort Mifflin, after Pennsylvania's general 
and Governor, Thomas Mifflin. At the capture of 
Philadelphia by the British the fort was gallantly de- 
fended by Col. Samuel Smith, of Maryland, holding 
out against an overwhelming force of British until 
nine-tenths of its garrison was hors du combat. In 
1776, Gen. Israel Putnam was deputed by Congress to 
provide for the safety of Philadelphia and look after 
its fortifications. The object sought was defense on 
the land as well as the seaward side. Putnam made 
his surveys and began his intrenchments, of which 
next year the British showed their approval by adopt- 
ing and completing them. A battery was thrown up 
on Darby Creek or Tinnecum Island, below Mud 
Fort. The British entered the city in 1777 and com- 
menced fortifying it, after they had reduced Mud 
Fort and Red Bank. A battery was erected near Reed 
and Swanson Streets, the Association Battery at Wicaco 
was renovated and armed, and a third battery put up 
near Swanson and Christian Streets, on the other side 
of Wicaco. A fourth battery was erected on a wharf 
at Kensington, above the mouth of the Cohocksink. 
On the land side Putnam's unfinished lines were fol- 
lowed up with a series of redoubts and intrenchments, 
protected by outworks and abattis. The first of these 
was on the bank of the Cohocksink, east of Front 
Street and above the Frankford road, a square redoubt, 
commanding the approach to the Northern Liberties 
by three important roads. It was flanked with abattis 
and redans. The next redoubt was west of the Ger- 
mantown road, north of Poplar Street; the third was 
on the same line, west of Third Street, and the fourth 
northwest of that, with a redan to support its flanks. 



The fifth battery and redoubt was at the corner of the 
present Poplar and Sixth Streets ; the sixth, east of 
the Ridge road near Fairmount Avenue ; the seventh, 
near Fairmount Avenue on Bush Hill. An advance 
battery on the Ridge road covered the approach to this 
redoubt. Number eight was near the intersection of 
Twentieth Street with Fairmount Avenue; ninth, near 
Lemon Hill ; tenth, on the northwest slope of Fair- 
mount Hill. This commanding point had also small 
batteries on its west and northeast slopes. There 
were rifle-pits in advance of the redoubts on all the 
main roads, and a lunette was thrown up on the Ridge 
road below the present site of Girard College. This 
line, it will be noted, was the line also of fine resi- 
dences and country-seats. It commanded generally 
what would have been the south bank of the Schuyl- 
kill, provided that river ever actually crossed to the 
Delaware from above Fairmount to Kensington. 
Two or three fascined redoubts were built on the hills 
on both sides of the Schuylkill commanding the Lower 
and Middle Ferries. In the time of the late civil war, 
when it was feared Philadelphia would not be safe 
from Confederate raids, this important spot was once 
more fortified. In 1812 forts were erected on the east 
side of Gray's Ferry, commanding that road of ap- 
proach, and on the same elevation west of the 
Schuylkill, opposite Hamilton's Grove. 

A good deal has been said in regard to the early 
occupants of land along the Schuylkill and Delaware 
on the site of Philadelphia, and much more will be 
found on this subject in connection with the narra- 
tive as it progresses. It is necessary to the full com- 
prehension of a city's topography, and it is also an 
integral part of that city's history, to trace the lines 
on which population spread from point to point until 
the wilderness became thickly settled. It is not need- 
ful, however, to give the names and the lots taken by 
all the first settlers of Penn's newly laid off city, since 
one lot is but the pattern of all the others, and the 
history of one is the history of all. That history will 
be found to be fully treated. But with regard to 
land outside the city the case was different. Here 
men had a choice, and the eligibility of this or that 
locality is illustrated by the promptness of its occu- 
pancy as compared with the taking up of others. 
Fortunately there are extant maps which enable us 
to give the ownership of tracts in Philadelphia at 
several intervals with very satisfactory exactness. 
The first and most important of these maps is that of 
Thomas Holme, Penn's first surveyor-general, who 
began in 1681 " A Map of the Improved Parts of the 
Province of Pennsylvania." It is remarkably clear 
and accurate for the first survey of a wooded wilder- 
ness, is well engraved, and a handsome facsimile of 
it has recently been republished. Beginning, as we 
did when tracing the streams, at the south corner, we 
find the line of swamp northeast of Bow Creek very 
clearly marked and colored in green. Peter Ellet, 
who held the point of land where Cobb's and Darby 



TOPOGRAPHY. 



13 



Creeks unite, held also the point on the east side of 
Cobb's Creek, and a piece of dry land in the swamp 
to the east, which he had to reach by a bridge or 
causeway. There are three other dry spots in these 
swamps, occupied by Andrew Boon, Ernest Cock, 
and Peter Cock. These were old Swedish titles, con- 
firmed by patents from Upland Court under the Duke 
of York's laws. No other land is marked as being 
held southwest of Schuylkill and east of Minquas 
Kill. Northwest of this kill and of Peter Ellet's land 
is the tract of Otto Ernest Cock, running up to the 
Swedes' Mill tract. On the east of these are the lands 
of Oelle Dalbo, 1. Hunt, Enochson and Jonas Neil- 
son, and then come the farms of Widow Justice, An- 
dreis Justeison, Andrew Peterson, and Robert Long- 
shore. A large tract northwest of these is assigned 
to Peter Joccum, Thomas Pascall, Wm. Clayton, 
Meil Jonson, Mouns (Moens) Jonson, and Lawrence 
Hedding. Northwest of these again are " The Lib- 
erty Lands of Philadelphia City," a broad, long belt, 
crossing the Schuylkill above the city, extending to 
Frankford Creek and the Wingohocking in one direc- 
tion, and descending to the Delaware between Pegg's 
Run and Vine Street. This tract included Spring- 
ettsbury Manor, Fairmoant, and in fact the entire 
townships of Blockley, Penn, and Northern Liberties, 
except a part of the latter on the Delaware front. 
On the east side of Schuylkill, northwest of this tract, 
are lands which belonged to Robert Turner, Richard 
and Robert Vicaris, and the " German TowDship 
Company," their tract being bounded north and 
northwest and northeast by " Gulielma Maria" and 
" Penn's Manor of Springfield." Roxborough is as- 
signed respectively to Phil. Tathman, Francis Fin- 
cher, James Claypoole, Samuel Bennett, Charles 
Hartford, Richard Snee, Charles Jones, Jonas Smith, 
Jasper Farmer, and the Plymouth Company, whose 
tract extends into Montgomery County. When we 
return to the Delaware we find the farms on that 
stream from the Liberties up marked down to An- 
drew Salung, Michael Neelson, Thomas Fairman, 
Samuel Carpenter, John Bowyer, Robert Turner, 
Gunnar Rambo and Peter Nelson, Mouns Cock, 
George Foreman, Wm. Salway, and Eric Cock. 
Northeast of Frankford Creek is Toaconing (Tacony) 
township, bounded by the Little Tacony and the Del- 
aware. Between the Little and Great Tacony were 
holdings of Thomas Fairman, Henry Waddy, Robert 
Adams, John Harper, John Hughes, John Bunto, 
Henry Waddy again, Benjamin East, etc. In Bris- 
tol, between the Tacony and Wingohocking, the 
holders were John Moon, Griffith Jones, Thomas 
Bowman, Barnabas Wilcox, John Goodson, Richard 
Townshend, John Barnes, Samuel Carpenter, John 
Songhurst, and Benjamin Whitehead. From Tao- 
coning township to Dublin or Pennepack Creek on 
the Delaware were Enoch & Keene, George Hutch- 
inson, Charles Claus, Neels- Nelson, Peter Rambo, 
Erick Meels, Antony Salter, Elenor Holme, Ha. 



Salter, Charles Thomas, Thomas Sare. West of 
these were John Ducket, John James, Kat. Martin, 
Joseph Ashtot, John Simmer, Richard Worrul, 
Thomas Levesly, Robert Fairman, Walter King, 
Richard Dungworth, William Chamberlin, and Jo- 
seph Phipps. Coming down on the northeast side 
of Dublin Creek, and south of Moreland Manor, we 
find Daniel Heaphy, William Stanley, Silas Crispin, 
John Mason, Allen Foster, Jam. Atkinson, Joseph 
Fisher, Robert Turner, Samuel Claridg, Thomas 
Holme, Peter Rambo, Jr., Lase Bore, and Benj. 
Acrod. This brings us to the Poquessing. The 
original occupants of Byberry were Robert Fairman, 
Thomas Young, John Carver, Edward Godwin, 
Nicholas Rideout, Giles Knight, John Tibby, Thomas 
Cross, Samuel Ellis Daniel Jones, Andrew Gris- 
comb, George John, and Collis Hart. 

The names upon Holme's map, however, do not 
always include a case of actual occupancy. Many 
allotments were never taken up at all by the parties 
who subscribed for land; many never immigrated; 
many let their subscriptions lapse without payment, 
and the assignments in numerous cases were altered 
or modified by the Proprietary Government. This 
is shown, for example, in Reed's map, reproduced in 
facsimile in 1846. On this map the Northern and 
Western Liberties are no longer unoccupied, and it 
is evident that many landholders under Swedish, 
Dutch, and English grants, ignored by Holme, have 
had their claims and locations recognized. Peter 
Cock, for instance, had a two-hundred-acre tract of 
this description in Blockley west of Mill Creek; 
William Warner and son three large tracts north- 
west of this, stretching from Schuylkill half-way to 
Cobb's Creek on the line of the Haverford road. 
Jurian Hartfelder's patent for four hundred and 
fifty-seven acres at what was afterwards Camping- 
ton, southwest of Cohocksink Creek, is now mapped. 
The Swansons, who owned Coaquinnoc as well as land 
at Wicaco, having given up the former, are assigned 
in recompense a large tract, twelve hundred and 
twenty acres in all, west of Springettsbury, and lying 
between that and the Welsh purchase of Griffith 
Jones and John Roberts. This Swanson tract was on 
both sides the Schuylkill from the Falls to Fairmount. 
Northwest of it and between it and the purchases 
of Pastorius for the Frankford (Germantown) Com- 
pany were numerous small farms averaging not over 
fifty acres, of which one is put down to Penn's Dep- 
uty Governor, William Markham, and one to Dennis 
Rockford. Actual settlers and " Welcome" passengers 
or immigrants of 1682-83 are found among these land- 
holders' names in goodly numbers. Shakhamaxunk 
(Shackamaxon, Kensington) lands appear in a large 
tract without names, while Kensington proper ap- 
pears to be laid off into town lots ; but northwest of 
these many names familiar in the first years of Penn's 
proprietorship are found, and they do not agree in 
many instances with names attached to the same 



14 



HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA. 



localities in Holme's map. Among these names are 
those of Holme himself, Nicholas Moore, Thomas 
Lloyd, John Goodson, James Claypoole, James Har- 
rison, Christopher Taylor, Robert Turner, Joseph 
Fisher, Isaac Norris, Joseph Growden, Society of 
Free Traders, John Mifflin, Samuel Carpenter, John 
Songhurst, Enoch Flower, John Barber, Thomas 
Bowman, Robert Greenway, Silas Crispin, Nicholas 
Wain, Thomas Pudyard, etc., all names recorded 
among those of the first Quaker settlements and 
names of persons prominent in the history of Phila- 
delphia and the province. 

The quaint-looking map of Nicholas Scull and I. 
Heap is dated 1750. It is small and not very precise, 
yet it conveys a good deal of topographical informa- 
tion. On this map Bow Creek is distinctly marked 
and named, but it opens on the Delaware at Mud 
Island ; Minquas Kill is called Kingsesse Creek, Boon's 
Island retains its name, but Simcock now owns Peter 
Ellett's land, and the names of Boon and Cock are no 
longer found on these swampy lands. The middle of 
the three islands that now appear east of Mingo 
Creek is called Carpenter's; the one at the mouth 
of Schuylkill, Province Island. Joccum holds his 
own southeast of the Darby road, and the lands west 
of Penrose Ferry belong to Bonsai and Jones Hunt. 
On the east side of Schuylkill at this point, going 
northwest, the names are Hannis, Penrose, Cox, Lord, 
Morris, Cadwallader, Rambo, and then we come to 
Gray and Gray's Ferry. Besides these there are not 
many names in all of the Southwark, Moyamensing, 
and Passayunk peninsula; Cox, Brockden, Morris, 
Wharton (Wharton's lane named for him), Duche, 
Pemberton, Lorenz, Turner, Davey, Sims, Griffin, 
Powell, Lawrence, Crouse, and Poll are all of them. 
Northwest of the Darby road, on Cobb's Creek, the 
names are found of Rambo, Stilly (Stille), Whitman, 
showing that the Swedes stil] held their own here. On 
the Darby road, between Blue Bell Tavern and Gray's 
Ferry, were Gibson, Bartram, Hanby, White, Jones, 
Coffman (Kaufman), Richard, Lois, and George. 
The Warners still held on the Schuylkill west from 
Fairmount; Scull kept the Upper Ferry, Springett- 
bnry became a small, insignificant tract. Bush Hill ad- 
joins ground of Plumsted, Swansons still hold (under 
the name of Shute) their tract east of Schuylkill, and 
Mifflin, Harrison, etc., remain where they originally 
planted. The house of Isaac Norris at Fair Hill is 
given with a cupola on it. There is another on James 
Logan's mansion at Stenton. The families of Wain, 
Greenway, More, Ashmead, Whitman, Griffith ap- 
pear still on original sites in the northeast, yet after 
all there has been a woful thinning out of " first 
purchasers." 

In 1762, Matthew Clarkson and M.Biddle published 
a map, principally of the front of the city, as far west 
as Eighth Street, and in Southwark to Second Street 
at that day. Windmill Island then lay in the channel 
between Pine and Christian Streets, the mill on the 



extreme north end. There was a fort just south of 
Wicaco lane, closing Swanson Street in that direction. 
Coates' wharf was midway between Wicaco lane and 
Christian Street, Dennis' factory, the Swedes' Church, 
Gloria Dei, Wharton's, immediately above Christian 
Street. The Dock at that- time extended from Third 
Street, half-way between Chestnut and Walnut 
Streets, diagonally to a point just east of the foot 
of Spruce Street. Reynolds and Penrose were wharf- 
owners foot of Queen Street; Trotter, foot of Cath- 
arine Street; Niemans, Lewis, Allen, and Penrose, 
to beyond Almond Street; Moes, Hockley, Mifflin, 
Church, Morton, Moore, and Willing, to Lombard 
Street; Eagan & Nixon, Rhoads & Emlin, Plum- 
stead, Sims, May & Allen, Powel, and Stamper, as 
far as Dock Creek. On the east side of the Dock 
the wharf belonged to "The Corporation;" then came 
Hamilton, Penrose, Dickinson, Fishbourne & Mere- 
dith, Carpenter, Flower, Morris, King, Pemberton, 
and then the "Crooked Billet" public landing, foot 
of Chestnut Street. Old Ferry Slip and Austin's 
Ferry were at the foot of Arch Street. From Chest- 
nut Street to Callowhill Street the names of wharf- 
holders were Sims, Lawrence, Allen, Henry, Masters, 
Hoop, Potts, Bickley, Aspend & House, Clifford, Rawle 
& Peel, Warner, Okill, 'Wilkinson, Hoops, Shoe- 
maker, James, Hodges, Hasell, Parrock, Goodman, 
Mifflin, West, Hewling, Salter, Allen, Clifton, Moyer, 
and Huston. 

William Faden, of London, got out a map in 1777, 
which is founded upon Scull and Heap's with few 
alterations, even copying the names of occupants of 
country-seats, etc., from the latter, although in the 
course of twenty-five years many of them were dead. 
A few prominent alterations were made by Faden, 
whose enterprise was no doubt stimulated by the 
curiosity of the British people in relation to America, 
and particularly Philadelphia, where the Congress 
sat. The streams are precisely the same as in Scull 
and Heap's maps. The principal novelty is the 
marking of a fort on Mud Island, the line of the 
chevaux-de-frise in the Delaware, and Governor John 
Penn's seat at Lansdowne, with a little more promi- 
nence to the claim of Kensington to be a settlement 
than was allowed in 1750. P. C. Varle, geographer 
and engineer, about 1797 or 1798, drew, and Scott en- 
graved, a very interesting map, which took in the Del- 
aware and the Schuylkill from about Wharton Street 
on the south to Columbia Avenue on the north. 

Hill's maps of 1796 and 1808 (the circular map) 
are almost purely topographical, and their leading 
features have been embodied in the foregoing pages. 
The Swedes' Church at Wicaco appears on the edge 
of the river bluff; the bed of Church Street, in the 
rear, runs through a deep ravine, widening at Whar- 
ton Street. There is a pond by the Passayunk road, 
south of Prime Street, and several of them south of 
Cedar Street between Shippen's and Irish lane. The 
changes in the channel, some land emerging, some 



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TOPOGRAPHY. 



15 



sinking, and the peculiar way in which the ranges of 
hills are divided into knobs and domes by the trans- 
verse ravines along the course of the streams, are 
curiously illustrated upon these maps. No Phila- 
delphian would be able to recognize the contour of 
his city if the streets, roads, and houses should be 
removed from this checker-board scheme of knolls 
and ravines, with a stream at the bottom of every 
hollow. The idea that Philadelphia is a flat and 
level city disappears in the presence of so much evi- 
dence of variety of grade. It may be added, in con- 
clusion, that both the surface contour and the subsoil 
of Philadelphia are favorable to good drainage ; none 
of the rock-masses are so continuous nor are the 
underlying clays so tenacious as to prevent water 
from sinking through them. 

To complete the chronographic history of Phila- 
delphia it is proper to add something concerning the 
city's political and quasi-political divisions. The city, 
laid off in 1681-83, was part of Philadelphia County, 
which, having about its present northern and south- 
ern boundaries, with the Delaware on the east, ex- 
tended westward indefinitely towards the State line. 
From time to time other counties were cut out of it 
until the present western boundary was practically 
established by the erection of Montgomery County 
in 1784. In 1701 (October 25th), Philadelphia was 
chartered by "William Penn as a sort of borough city, 
with a government of its own, separate from that of 
the State and county. This charter, which is said to 
have been modeled upon that of the old city of Bris- 
tol, England, bestowed only a very limited sort of 
municipal authority upon the mayor and corporation 
of the town. It was, however, divided into wards as 
the population increased, though the adjoining dis- 
tricts, boroughs, and townships of this county were 
not incorporated with the city until its final consoli- 
dation in 1854. The previous act of incorporation of 
the old city was passed March 11, 1789, but the charter 
of 1701 had been materially modified several times in 
this interval. In 1749, when Dr. Franklin, Joseph 
Shippen, Chief Justice Allen, and others took the 
census of the city, it comprised ten wards, named 
Mulberry, Dock, Lower Delaware, Upper Delaware, 
South, North, Middle, and the wards between, and 
named for High (or Market) Street, Chestnut Street, 
and Walnut Street, inclusive, with Fourth Street on 
the west. Upper and Lower Delaware, High, Chest- 
nut, Walnut, Dock were on the east. There were four 
western wards, — Mulberry, North, Middle, and South. 
In 1800 the ward division was improved and the 
number increased to fourteen, seven commencing at 
the Delaware and ending at Fourth Street, and seven 
extending from Fourth Street to the Schuylkill. This 
shows that half the population of the city at that 
time was east of Fourth Street, south of Vine Street, 
and north of South Street. These wards were thus 
laid off— Delaware side: New Market Ward, South 
to Spruce Street ; Dock Ward, Spruce to Walnut 



Street; Walnut Ward, Walnut to Chestnut Street; 
Chestnut Ward, Chestnut to Market Street; High 
Street Ward, Market to Arch Street ; Lower Delaware 
Ward, Arch to Sassafras Street; Upper Delaware 
Ward, Sassafras to Vine Street. Schuylkill side: 
Cedar Ward, South to Spruce Street (west of Fourth 
Street) ; Locust Ward, Spruce to Walnut Street ; 
South Ward, Walnut to Chestnut Street; Middle 
Ward, Chestnut to Market Street ; North Ward, Mar- 
ket to Arch Street ; South Mulberry Ward, Arch to 
Race Street; North Mulberry Ward, Race to Vine 
Street. 

Philadelphia now comprises thirty-one wards, a 
less number, in proportion, to the increase of area 
and population, than it had in 1800. The First Ward 
of the city begins on the Delaware at Wharton Street, 
runs west to the Passayunk road, down the latter to 
Broad Street, and thence south to the Delaware, taking 
in the whole of League Island. This ward includes 
part of Southwark, partly incorporated in 1762, the 
oldest district of Philadelphia County. Parts of the 
Swedish settlements of Wicaco and Moyamensing are 
within its limits, and it includes also Greenwich 
Island, with Girard Point, Martinsville, etc. Adjoin- 
ing the First Ward on the left, and bounded by the 
Schuylkill River, up to Washington Avenue, Ells 
worth Street, Passayunk road, and Broad Street down 
to League Island, the Twenty-sixth Ward is found. 
It includes a portion of what was once Moyamensing 
and part of Passayunk ; it lies " down the Neck," and 
includes what was once nearly all meadow, with, how- 
ever, solid ground above Point Breeze. Moyamensing, 
originally a farm tract deeded to Stille, Clensinith, 
and Andries, Swedes, in 1664, and confirmed to Stille, 
Andries, Bankson, and Mattson in 1684, later became 
a township. When it was incorporated, in 1812, it had 
an area of two thousand five hundred and sixty acres. 
Passayunk (called by Lindstrom, Paisajungh, and 
variously named in former times Passuming, Persla- 
yonk, Passayon, etc.) is said to have been the site of 
an Indian village, and to mean " a level place.'' The 
first survey of it included a tract of one thousand 
acres, granted to Lieut. Swen Shute in 1653. It 
was afterwards patented by Governor Nichols to the 
brothers Ashman and others. The Twenty-sixth 
Ward contains two cemeteries, the County Prison 
and the Point Breeze Gas- Works, Point Breeze Park, 
Girard Point, and the oil wharves. Opposite the 
Twenty-sixth Ward, on the other side of the Schuyl- 
kill, is found the Twenty-seventh Ward, taking in all 
the southwestern part of the city, between Bow, Darby, 
and Cobb's Creeks and the Schuylkill to Market Street, 
in West Philadelphia. Suffolk Park, the Almshouse 
property, Mount Moriah and Woodlands Cemeteries 
are within its extensive limits. It contained King- 
sessing and part of Blockley townships, the Darby and 
Baltimore roads, and the villages of Paschallville, 
Maylandville, West Philadelphia, Hamilton, and 
other ancient and modern settlements. North of the 



16 



HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA. 



Twenty-seventh Ward, still on the west side of the 
Schuylkill, and bounded by the city limits from Cobb's 
Greek to the corner opposite the mouth of the Wissa- 
hickon, is the Twenty-fourth Ward, which included the 
rest of Blockley, part of West Philadelphia, Mantua, 
Hestonville, Haddington, etc., with the grounds of 
the insane asylum and the greater part of Fairmount 
Park, with all its historic sites. Originally it was 
part of the Western Liberties, and it contained the 
district of Belmont also, which took its name from 
the country-seat of the Peters family, so distinguished 
in the Revolutionary and subsequent periods of the 
history of Philadelphia. Blockley was one of the 
oldest townships of the county, and contained origi- 
nally seven thousand five hundred and eighty acres. 

Returning to the Delaware side we find the Second 
Ward small and compact in comparison with those 
just mentioned, lying north of the First, from Whar- 
ton to Passayunk road, then to Ellsworth, to Broad, 
and to Christian Streets. This was a part of Wicaco, 
and the old United States Navy- Yard, now occupied 
by the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, was within 
its limits. The Third Ward, having the same bound- 
aries south, east, and west as the Second (Broad 
Street and the Delaware), lies north of it, following 
Mead Street from Delaware Avenue to Second, and 
German Street west to Passayunk road, to Fitzwater 
Street, thence to Broad Street. The Fourth Ward 
is north of the Third, within the same limits east and 
west, running up to South Street, west to Broad Street. 
These three wards include all the remaining part of 
Southwark and a portion of Moyamensing to the old 
city limits. West of them, from Broad Street to the 
Schuylkill, lies the Thirtieth Ward, between South j 
and Washington Avenue, running west along the J 
latter to Gray's Ferry road, up that road to Ellsworth 
Street, along Ellsworth to the Schuylkill River, then 
to South Street and to Broad Street. The United 
States Arsenal and Naval Asylum are in this ward. 
The Fifth Ward lies between Seventh Street and the 
Delaware, South Street on the south and Chestnut 
north. It abounds in the historic monuments of 
Philadelphia, for here the town began, here Penn 
first landed, and here the Declaration of 1776 was 
adopted and signed. Windmill Island, in the Dela- 
ware, belongs to the Fifth Ward. 

The Sixth Ward lies north of the Fifth, with Sev- 
enth Street for its western limit, and Vine Street on 
the north. West of Seventh Street, extending to the 
Schuylkill, are the Seventh, Eighth, Ninth, and Tenth 
Wards, Spruce Street marking the north limit of the 
Seventh, its southern line South Street; Chestnut 
Street is the north boundary of the Eighth ; Arch 
Street of the Ninth, and Vine Street of the Tenth. 
Old Philadelphia, therefore, is entirely included in 
Wards Five to Ten, inclusive. 

The Eleventh Ward extends up the Delaware from 
Vine Street to Poplar, with Third Street on the west. 
On the west of Third Street, as far as Sixth Street, 



from Vine to Poplar Street, is the Twelfth Ward; 
west of that the Thirteenth Ward extends to Tenth 
Street; the Fourteenth, to Broad Street; and the 
Fifteenth, to the Schuylkill, all three with Poplar 
and Vine Streets on north and south. The Elev- 
enth and Twelfth and part of the Thirteenth Wards 
were in what was the Northern Liberties. The 
land was part of Jurian Hartfelder's original pur- 
chase, called Hartsfield. Part of the Fourteenth 
and of the Fifteenth were in Springettsbury Manor, 
including Fairmount and Lemon Hill. Willow 
Street occupied the bed of Pegg's Run. Spring 
Garden District was partly in this parallelogram. It 
contains the Eastern Penitentiary and the Fairmount 
Water- Works. In this group were also to be found 
the so-called town of Callowhill, between Vine and 
Willow Streets and Front and Second, in the Northern 
Liberties, Campington, where the British barracks 
stood, the towns of Bath and Morrisville. Fairmount 
Park extends along the western boundary. The Six- 
teenth Ward is bounded on the east by the Delaware 
River, and on the south by Poplar Street. It extends 
on the north along Maiden or Laurel Street to the 
Frankford Road or Avenue, northward along the 
latter to Girard Avenue, and thence to its western 
boundary at Sixth Street. The Seventeenth Ward 
lies just north of it, between Girard Avenue and 
Oxford Street, and Sixth and Frankford road. The 
Eighteenth Ward is part of old Kensington, with 
the Frankford road on the west, the Delaware on the 
east, Maiden Street on the south, and Norris Street 
on the north. Immediately above is the Thirty-first 
Ward, cut out of the old Nineteenth, bounded east 
by the Delaware, south by Norris Street, west by 
Frankford road as far northwest as Oxford Street, 
then along Oxford to Sixth, Sixth to Lehigh Avenue, 
along the latter to Frankford road, and then by that 
road to Westmoreland Street, thence to the Point 
road, and thence, substantially in the same direction 
as Westmoreland Street, to the Delaware River. 
Here was an Indian town, perhaps a council-seat, 
called Shackamaxon ; here was the tree in front of 
Fairman's house, under the branches of which, it is 
alleged, William Penn held his treaty with the 
Indians, and here was ground owned before Penn's 
time by Lasse Cock, Gunner Rambo, and other 
Swedes. The Nineteenth Ward lies north of the 
Seventeenth. It extends along Frankford road from 
Norris to Oxford Street, then to Sixth, then to Ger- 
mantown Avenue, then to Lehigh Avenue, along the 
same to Kensington Avenue, then to Front Street, 
along the latter to Norris, and along Norris to the 
intersection of Frankford road. The Twentieth Ward 
is west of the Sixteenth, Seventeenth, and Nineteenth 
Wards, extending along Sixth Street from Poplar to 
Susquehanna Avenue, then west to Eleventh, south 
to Montgomery Avenue, and along the latter west to 
Broad Street, thence south to Poplar, and thence to 
the place of beginning. The Twenty-ninth, again, 



GEOLOGY AND ZOOLOGY. 



17 



is west of the Twentieth, with Broad Street on the 
east, and extending west to the Schuylkill, with Mont- 
gomery Avenue on the north and Poplar Street south. 
Girard College is in the Twenty-ninth Ward. The 
Twenty-eighth, a large ward, lies north and west of the 
Twentieth and Twenty-ninth, and westof the Twenty- 
fifth and Nineteenth, Sixth Street and the German- 
town road marking its east line, and the Schuyl- 
kill its west, Montgomery Avenue on the south, 
School lane northwest, and Wissahickon and Roberts 
Avenues north. This ward has seven cemeteries in 
it, with Laurel Hill and Schuylkill Falls on the west. 
The villages of Nicetown and Eising Sun are partly 
in it. The Twenty-first Ward, on both sides the 
Wissahickon, contains Manayunk and the township of 
Roxborough. The Twenty-second Ward, besides Ger- 
mantown and Chestnut Hill, has a number of villages, 
— Somerville, Branchtown, Crescentville, McCarters- 
ville, Olney, Feltonville, Milestown, Pittville, etc. 
The Twenty-fifth Ward, created out of portions of the 
old Nineteenth and Twenty-third Wards, begins on 
the Delaware River at a point where Lehigh Avenue 
would intersect if continued in a right line, and 
along Lehigh Avenue to Germantown Avenue, along 
the latter to the line of the Twenty-second Ward, 
along that line to Frankford Creek, along the creek to 
the Delaware, and down the latter to the place of be- 
ginning. It has in it Hunting Park, the New Cathe- 
dral Cemetery, Cooperville, Harrowgate, Franklin- 
ville, and Bridesburg. The Twenty-third Ward, the 
city's northeast corner, contains the old townships of 
Oxford, Byberry, Lower Dublin, and Moreland, the 
boroughs of Frankford, Tacony, and Holmesburg, and 
the settlements and villages of Olney, Milestown, 
White Hall, Volunteertown, Cedar Grove, Rockville, 
Hollinsville, Torresdale, Mechanicsville, Pleasant- 
ville, Smithfield, Knightsville, Bustleton, Vereeville, 
Sandy Hill, and Fox Chase. Byberry, Oxford, More- 
land, and Dublin are all old-established townships. 

Philadelphia County before 1784 contained much 
territory which had not been subdivided into town- 
ships. On the creation of Montgomery County, the 
following were in the county as of its present boun- 
daries : Moyamensing, Passyunk, Northern Liberties, 
Oxford, Bristol, Byberry, Moreland, Lower Dublin, 
Frankford, Germantown, Roxborough, Blockley, and 
Kingsessing. These were all that remained of forty- 
seven townships existing in 1741. The county of 
Montgomery took away with it the townships of 
Amity, Abington, Creesham, Cheltenham, Douglass, 
Upper Dublin, Franconia, Frederick, Gwynedd, New 
Hanover, Upper Hanover, Horsham, Limerick, Mont- 
gomery, Upper Merion, Lower Merion, Norriton, Ply- 
mouth, Providence, Perkiomen, Skippack, Salford, 
Springfield, Towamensing, Whitpaine, Worcester, 
and Wayamensing. Berks took Allemingle, Amity, 
Colebrookdale, Exeter, Murder Creek, and Oley. 

In Philadelphia's 82,700 acres there are more than 
twelve hundred miles of streets. Their continuous 



length would extend four hundred miles beyond Chi- 
cago, or reach to New Orleans. A man walking four 
miles an hour and ten hours a day would need a good 
month to traverse them all. There are about six 
thousand streets, lanes, alleys, and courts, all told, 
but a plain and simple method of enumeration en- 
ables the stranger to find any place in any one of 
them, the number of the house describing in what 
part of the city it is to be sought. Names of streets 
have undergone great changes in Philadelphia since 
Penn established his system of numbering them from 
the Delaware running from north to south, and using 
names of trees for streets running east and west. An'^ 
such method ought to have been adhered to, if for no 
other reason at least to protect a city from the niai- 
series and bad taste of city councilmen, who are com- 
monly presumptuous in proportion to their ignorance. 
At present the nomenclature of streets in Philadelphia 
resembles a " Dolly Varden" print of a very irregular 
pattern, — one style here, another style there, parti- 
colored and piebald all over. A street name should 
not be outre in its form, nor difficult to pronounce ; it 
should signify something, either an object, a person, 
or an event, and it should never be changed when 
once permanently bestowed. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE GEOLOGICAL STRUCTURE, VEGETATION, AND 
ANIMALS OF THE SITE OP PHILADELPHIA. 

The geology and the flora and fauna of a section 
so large as that occupied by the city of Philadel- 
phia must needs be a comprehensive and interest- 
ing study, embracing, as this region does, an area of 

i 129.4 square miles, and including within that area 
all the varieties of soil and all the diversities of 
surface to be looked for in a range of elevation 

' from tide-washed, alluvial flats to rock-faced bluffs 

J and granite ledges three hundred feet high (over four 
hundred at Chestnut Hill), and scarred with the 

| marks of those rude wars of the giants which are 
typical of the glacial period. Much attention has 
been given to this subject from the days of James 
Logan, Benjamin Franklin and the American Philo- 

j sophical Society, John Bartram, and Alexander Wil- 
son down to the present time, and much has been 

' written and published concerning the natural history 
and physical characteristics of Philadelphia, in both 
a comprehensive and a fragmentary and special way. 
It is hard to find, however, any brief and clear resumes 
of the general subject, couched in language such as all 
can understand without having scientific vocabularies 
at their fingers' ends, and condensed within such a 

i space that it does not become a laborious task to read 
them. No ordinary reader can afford to ransack the 



18 



HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA. 



journals of the American Philosophical Society, or 
compare together all the five hundred and seventy 
thousand specimens in the collections of the Philadel- 
phia Academy of Natural Sciences in pursuit of infor- 
mation of this kind, but every one is capable and will- 
ing to master the important features, briefly and plainly 
set forth, of the order of rocks, plants, and animals 
appertaining to his place of abode. Without having 
room for hypothesis, without giving space to specula- 
tion, it is proposed here to present the leading facts 
bearing upon these matters, in as concise a form as 
may be. We will not be quite so brief and concise, 
however, as some of the old writers. For instance, 
Dr. Mease, in his " Picture of Philadelphia," seems 
to have conceived that such a subject could be ex- 
hausted and dismissed in a paragraph. " The imme- 
diate substratum of Philadelphia," he says, " is clay 
of various hues and degrees of tenacity, mixed with 
more or less sand, or sand and gravel. Underneath, 
at various depths, from twenty to nearly forty feet, and 
also on the opposite shores of New Jersey, are found 
a variety of vegetable remains, which evidently appear 
to have been left there in remote period of time by the 
retiring waters; hickory-nuts were found a few years 
since in digging a well upwards of thirty feet beneath 
the surface, and the trunk of a sycamore (buttonwood) 
tree was discovered in Seventh near Mulberry Street, 
near forty feet below, imbedded in black mud, abound- 
ing with leaves and acorns. About sixty feet distant 
from that place, and nearly at the same depth, a bone 
was found ; the stratum above was a tough potter's 
clay. In various other parts of the city, and even at 
the distance of several miles in the country, similar 
discoveries have been made. Sharks' teeth are occa- 
sionally dug up many feet below the surface near 
Mount Holly. All these facts seem to prove the truth 
of the opinion first delivered by our countryman, 
Lewis Evans, that the site of Philadelphia formed 
part of the sea, whose coast was bounded by a reef of 
rocks (they are formed of gneiss, micaceous schist, 
and other primitive rocks), some two, three, or six 
miles broad, rising generally a little higher than the 
adjoining land, and extending from New York west- 
wardly by the Falls of Delaware, Schuylkill, Susque- 
hannah, Gunpowder, Patapsco, Potomac, Rappahan- 
nock, James River, and Roanoke, which was the 
ancient maritime boundary, and forms a regular 
curve. The clay and other soil which compose the 
borders of the rivers descending from the upland 
through this tract are formed by the soil washed 
down with the floods and mixed with the sand left 
by the sea." And that is all which Dr. Mease has to 
say of the geology of Philadelphia. 1 



The geology of Philadelphia presents many diffi- 
culties, and no satisfactory solution of them has yet 
been reached. There was a geological survey of the 
State of Pennsylvania made fifty years ago, under 
the supervision of Prof. Henry D. Rodgers, which 
established many facts in the geognosy of the State, 
but was not sufficiently thorough to enable the geol- 
ogy of the difficult eastern portion to be determined. 
The geological map of this survey was published in 
1858. Since that time great advances have been 
made in systematic investigation. A second geolog- 
ical survey of the State is in progress, the prelimi- 
nary reports of which were made in 1874, and further 
reports have been made annually since then, under 
the auspices of a State commission and the superin- 
tendence of Prof. Peter Lesley, State geologist. Mr. 
Charles E. Hall is making the examination of the 
rocks on the lower Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers. 
Mr. H. C. Lewis and Rev. G. F. Wright are studying 
the surface deposits, moraines, etc., of this section. 
Mr. Hall has already made a report of progress (1881) 
for his section, including a large geological map of 
Philadelphia, Bucks, and Montgomery Counties, with 
special analyses of minerals, made by Dr. F. A. Genth 
and his son. There have also been published in this 
connection a historical sketch of geological explora- 
tions in Pennsylvania and other States by J. P. Les- 
ley, a preliminary report of the mineralogy of the 
State by Dr. Genth, and a "Special Report on the 
Trap Dykes of Southeastern Pennsylvania" by Prof. 
T. Sterry Hunt. These various reports enable the 



1 It iH of course understood that geology as u science is altogether 
modern. It did not properly exist before Werner wrote, and the Freiberg 
professor was not born until 1750. Werner, De Snussure, Cuvicr, Hut- 
ton first brought paleontology into existence by showing that rocks 
were to be profitably studied, not as stones, but as beds of fossils. This 
was the key t-> the cryptogram of the rocks. But the meteorology and 



geognosy, the flora and fauna and mineralogy of the earth, had been 
universally studied before that, and the philosophers of early Philadel- 
phia gave as much attention to their own section as most others were 
contemporaneously receiving. Isaac Lea, of Wilmington, in 1S17 con- 
tiibutcd to the Journal of the Academy of Natural Sciences a brief study 
of" the minerals of Philadelphia. Gerhardt Troost, an alumnus of Ley- 
dcn and Paris, who camo to this country in 1810 in the interest of man- 
ufacturers of chemicals, and who did much to advance the knowledge of 
the country's mineral wealth in several sections, in Maryland and Ten- 
nessee as well as Pennsylvania, published in 1S20 a regular " Geological 
Survey" of Philadelphia, giving pretty accurately the rock forms and 
stratifications of the environs of the city. Since then the subject has 
been handled more or less fully by P. A. Brown, G. W. Carpenter, II. D. 
Rodgers, F. A. Genth, II. C. Lewis, C. E. Hall, and others. The earlier 
treatises, however, while they contain many facts, are worthless as sys- 
tematic presentations of scientific knowledge. Accurate examination 
and acute observation go for nothing in support of antiquated and ob- 
solete formulas. Modern geology takes no account of the ancient con- 
test between the Neptunians and Plutouians. Science is greater than its 
greatest masters, and it resigns even a Newton and a Cuvier to oblivion 
in respect of matters where their hypotheses have been superseded by 
the progress of modern discovery. In mineralogy, Berzelius, Werner, 
De Lisle, Hally, and Mohs are giving place to a modern school which is 
growing up under the light of the new chemistry ; in botany, Linnasus 
and De Candolle arebecoiningasobsoleteasDioscoridesand Cassalpinus; 
in geology and the associated sciences, Catastrophists are no longer 
heeded, and even Agassiz, Cuvier, and Carpenter are falling in the rear 
behind the followers of Lamarck and Darwin, and incisive and destruc- 
tive heralds of development and evolution like Herbert Spencer, Hux- 
ley, Tyndall, Buchner, Haeckel, Vircbow, Cope, and Gegenbaur. The 
old geologists, it lias been well remarked, are like the knights who fought 
about the color of the shield. In fact we cannot, in this science, advance 
from limited, pjfrticular data to broad generalization; we must bring 
the sum of extensive general knowledge to the understanding of special 
facts revealed by particular localities. 



GEOLOGY AND ZOOLOGY. 



19 



progress made in determining .the geological features 
of the Pennsylvanian country to be understood. 

Prof. Lesley, in speaking of the geological maps 
and profiles of cross sections accompanying the report 
on Philadelphia County, remarks that "it must not 
be supposed that the geology of the district is fully 
understood. Geologists will have much to discover 
in years to come. A deep obscurity still shrouds 
parts of its underground structure and constitution, 
especially west of the Schuylkill." There are many 
difficulties, says the professor, in making proper ex- 
aminations. " The surface of the country is under 
Iiigh cultivation. The water-courses are shallow. 
Extensive areas are marked by recent gravel and 
rlay deposits. Rock exposures, though numerous, 
are small and isolated. Plications, faults, and even 
overturns are the rule, rather than the exception ; 
and metamorphism is universal. Mineral beds are 
rare. Fossils are absolutely wanting. Character- 
istic lithological features are evident enough on a 
large scale ; but when looked for on a small scale 
they fail the geologist at every stage of his progress, 
along any belt of outcrop, and fade into each other, 
or repeat themselves and alternate so rapidly and 
monotonously, in the visible groups of strata exposed, 
that special classification in vertical order becomes 
almost impossible." The future systematic geology 
of the district, the professor adds, must largely de- 
pend on artesian well borings. In constructing the 
map there is a practical difficulty growing out of 
the' number and confusion of azoic rocks, all of a 
metamorphic character. " We have a country of 
mica schists, garnet schists, granitic, syenitic, horn- 
blendic, and micaceous gneisses, with included ser- 
pentine, steatite, talc schists, chrome iron beds, and 
disseminated gold, all of them rocks which it is still 
impossible to assign with the least confidence to any 
age." 

Geology is so much a matter of classified, tabulated 
names and their definitions that it cannot be intelli- 
gently discussed apart from this system of grouping 
and interpretation. Prof. Hitchcock, in preparing a 
tentative geological map of the United States, adopts 
the following scheme, the oldest formations being first 
given : 

(a) EOZOIC. (b) PALjEOZOIC. 

(1) Silurian ; (2) Devonian ; (:j) Coal Measures. 

(and lower carboniferous). (and permo carboniferous). 
(c) MESOZOTC. (rf) CENOZOIC. 



(1) Triassio (2) Cretaceous. Tertiary; Alluvium ; Volcanic. 
and 
Jurassic. 

"The eozoic (dawn of life) embraces all formations 
older than the parodoxide beds, including the meta- 
morphic Appalachian schists," says Prof. Hitchcock. 
Philadelphia, in Prof. Hitchcock's map, rests entirely 
upon the eozoic formation. A better and more gen- 
eral scheme is that of Prof. James D. Dana, and 
which our geologists usually follow, with some mod- 
ifications. It may be rudely represented thus : 



5 1 



< 

s 



Z b 

< o 

P a 

o 



AGE OF MAN. Epochs and Sub-Epochs. 

C Post-Tertiary (xvii.) Pleistocene. 



Tertiary.. 



(xv 

■ < (x-v 

I (xi 



(xvi.) Pleiocene. 

xv.) Miocene. 

iv.) Eocene. 



Cretaceous.. 



Wealden 
Epoch. 



Oolitic 
Epoch. 



Li as sic 
Epoch. 



Triassic. 



(xiii.) Upper and Lower Chalk 
{Upper CretaceoiiB). 

(xii.) Middle CreraceoiiH 

(Upper Green Sand). 

(xi.) Lower Cretaceona 

(Lower Green Sand). 

(x.) Wealden. 

(ix.) Upper Oolite (Portland 

Clay), 
(viii.) Middle Oolite (Oxford 

Clay;. 

(vii.) Lower Oolite (Stones- 
field), 
fvi.) Upper Lias, 
(v.) Marl Stone. 

(iv.) Lower LiaB. 

(iii.) Keuper. 

hi.) Muschelkalk. 

(i.) Buntersandstein. 



f Permian 

Carboniferous . 



Sub- Carboniferous.. 



Catskill 

Chemung .. 

Hamilton . 



Upper Helderberg.. 



(xv.) Permo Carboniferous. 

f (xiv. cj Upper Coal Measures. 
-< (xiv.b) LnwerCoal Measures. 
I (xiv. a) Millstone Grit. 

f (xiii.h) Upper Sub-Carbou- 
I iferous. 
j (xiii. a) Lower Sub-Carbon- 
ic iferous. 



..(xii.) Catskill. 

(xi. b) Chemung, 
(xi. a) Portage. 

(x. c) Gpnesce. 
(x. b) Hamilton. 
(x. aj Marcelhis. 

(ix. c) Upppr Helderberg. 
\ix. b) Schoharie. 
_ (ix. a) Cauda-Galli. 



Upper 
Silurian. 



Lower 
Silurian. 



Oriskany (viii.) Oriskany. 



Lower Hel- 
derberg. 

Salina 

Niagara... ■ 

Hudson.... 



Trenton . 



■j (vii.) Lower Helderberg. 
..(vi.) Saliferous. 

(v. b) Medina. 
(v. a) Oneida. 

f (iv. b'\ Hudson. 
[ (iv. a) Utica. 

C (iii. b) Trenton, Black River, 

Birds' Eye. 
t (iii. a) Chazy. 

f (ii. b) Calciferous. 
1 (ii. a) Potsdam. 



. (i.) Azoic. 



The ascent from primitive rocks to those more re- 
cent is from the bottom of the column, beginning 
with azoic rocks, or those in which there are no 
fossils, corresponding to Prof. Hitchcock's eozoic. 
Geologists recognize two great divisions of rocks: (1) 
the massive or (igneous) primitive rocks, which form 
the earth's crust. These have been formed by the 
action of heat, underlie all others, or have been 
forced up through them from beneath. Such are 
granite, basalt, porphyry, etc. (2) The sedimentary 



20 



HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA. 



or stratified rocks, which have been deposited by 
water as limestone, clays, etc. A third form of rock 
is the metamorphic, resting on the igneous rocks, un- 
derlying the stratified rocks, containing no fossils, or 
scarcely any, stratified, yet having been violently 
changed (metamorphosed) by heat or water, or both. 
Of such are gneiss, mica slate, talcous slate, etc. 
The rocks which underlie Philadelphia are almost all 
of them metamorphic. Geologists divide rocks as to 
their antiquity into several ages, as the azoic (eozoic), 
paleozoic (or the age of primary forms of life, etc., 
such as mollusks), mesozoic, or secondary age, and 
cenozoic, or tertiary age. Philadelphia County shows 
none but rocks of the azoic and the paleozoic ages. 
The paleozoic age is divided into Upper and Lower 
Silurian, Devonian, and Carboniferous periods or 
epochs, and Philadelphia can show but few paleozoic 
strata of a more recent epoch than the Lower Silurian 
formation. This formation comprises eight stages or 
groups, and Philadelphia County again confines itself 
principally to the lowest of these groups, the Potsdam 
sandstone. The primitive rocks are in many places, 
however, overlaid by the drift brought down by floods 
and glaciers and by the mud deposited from rivers. 
This is not a stratification, but a superficial and (ge- 
ologically speaking) a recent deposit. It is classed as 
belonging to the modern epoch, the age of man. The 
glacial drift period is assumed to be like a wedge be- 
tween the tertiary or post-tertiary period and the age 
of man. Its characteristic mark is the deposit of 
gravel and bowlders. The county of Philadelphia 
shows many of these erratic bowlders or "gray- 
heads.'' In many places the primitive rock is over- 
laid with deep beds of gravel, and in other places 
the recent alluvium rests in deep beds both upon 
the primitive rock and upon the gravel ; sometimes 
it rests upon both at once, overlying the gravel which 
overlies the bed of azoic rock. 

The general system for the rocks embraced in Mont- 
gomery, Bucks, and Philadelphia Counties is recent 
alluvium, Trenton Gravel, Red Gravel, Philadelphia 
Brick Clay, Yellow Gravel, Bryn JIawr Gravel, Iron- 
Bearing Clay, Wealden Clay, Trap, New Red Sand- 
stone (mesozoic), Serpentine, Chestnut Hill Garnetif- 
erous Schists, Manayunk Mica Schists and Gneiss, 
Philadelphia Mica Schists and Gneiss, Quartzose 
Slate and Mica Schists of South Valley Hill, Slate 
and Limestone alternations, Magnesian Limestone 
and Marble (No. 2), Edgehill Rock (Quartzite and 
Conglomerate), Potsdam Sandstone (No. 1), Syenitic 
and Granitic Rocks. Of these the first six are of 
recent formation ; Wealden clay belongs to the Ceno- 
zoic epoch ; the slate, sandstone, and conglomerate of 
the new red sandstone formation are of Mesozoic ; 
the syenites and granites are of the Laurentian sys- 
tem of primitive or metamorphosed rock, and the 
slates, mica schist, marble, limestone, and slate and 
limestone alternations belong to the calciferous, 
Trenton and Hudson River groups, Cambro-Silurian 



epoch, Paleozoic period, metamorphosed rocks. With 
respect to distribution, we find the Potsdam sandstone * 
along the northern edge of Philadelphia County in 
two places. The syenite group is found north of 
Chestnut Hill. " Otherwise," says Mr. Charles E. 
Hall, "the mica schists and gneisses occupy the 
entire county, unless limestone be proven to exist 
north of Somerton and flanking the Potsdam sand- 
stone on the south. Its existence is exceedingly 
doubtful." 2 Thegneissic and micaceous series of rocks 
in Philadelphia County seem to belong to one geo- 
logical formation. Sharply-defined subdivisions have 
not been thus far detected. The belts of rocks fade 
into and blend with one another in a sort of imper- 
ceptible gradation and transition. The "pitch" of 
the rock is generally northwestward except along the 
northern edge, where there is a reverse " dip." This 
is so invariable as to be a great aid to the geologist 
in tracing the true relations of these rocks to one 
another. The entire northern portion of Philadel- 
phia County is covered by gravel. Along the Dela- 
ware River mud or alluvial deposits are frequent. 
They cover the greater part of the south end of the 
city. The gravel-beds flank these mud deposits along 
the course of the river. This belt of gravel was de- 
posited by the river before it had receded to its present 
channel ; it marks the ancient bed of the Delaware. 
The gravel is exposed wherever streets have been 
graded down. The Trenton or river-shore gravel 
gradually merges into what are known as the Phila- 
delphia brick clays, mixed with or bounded by the 
red and yellow gravels. These red gravels are so 
characteristically high in their colors that William 
Penn would not employ them when he laid out the 
walks of his garden and lawn at Pennsbury Manor,. 
and directed his steward to get the gravel from the 
pit near by and not from Philadelphia, as that was. 
" too red." In other words, he preferred the Trenton 
to the Philadelphia red clay gravel. The gravel-beds 
in the southern part of Philadelphia are at least one 
hundred feet deep. The gravels are composed of and 
have been derived from the paleozoic rocks along the 
course of the upper Delaware, — debris brought down 
by ice action and floods. 

The garnetiferous group of Philadelphia County is 
exposed across the, northern end, between Chestnut 



1 So called from a sandstone found and determined iu New York by 
the State geological survey. All the groups in geology east of the Alle- 
ghanies are arranged on the liasis of this survey. The Potsdam stone is 
a fine agglomerate of sand, with occasional specks of mica in it. In 
Philadelphia its strata are sijncHmd generally ; i e., they dip towards e.'trli 
other so as to foim basins. 

- Report of Progress, C°, p. On. By syenite is meant simply a form of 
granite (from Sycne, in E,^ypt) in which the tough hornblendo pre- 
dominates instead of mica. Granite is composed of feldspar(tho chief 
ingredient), quart/, or flint, and mica. Gneiss is a bastard granitic ag- 
glomerate, with a slaty structure. Quartz is a form of flint, and w hen 
ground produces sand; feldspar, when ground, yields clay; thus the allu- 
vium of the Philadelphia flats overlying the gravel and the primitive 
rucks is, iu fact, composed of the same substance us these solid masses of 
crystallized and apparently adamantine solidity. So it is also with the 
soils. 



GEOLOGY AND ZOOLOGY. 



21 



Hill and the Schuylkill River. " Its northern limit 
is a diagonal line across the northern corner of the 
county." Its southern limit is less clear, but indica- 
tions are found half-way between Lafayette Station 
and Manayunk. The rocks in this belt are garnet- 
iferous mica schists (schists are rocks having a slaty 
structure, but otherwise not dissimilar to gneissic 
rocks), thin-bedded sandy gneisses, and hornblendic 
slate. They are peculiar in having deposits of ser- 
pentine and steatite. 1 Serpentine occurs on the north- 
western edge of Chestnut Hill, extending across the 
Wissahiccon to a point half-way to the Ridge road. 
It is also found not far above Manatawna, and again 
half-way between that point and Lafayette. These 
strips of serpentine are on a line with and belong to 
the same geological " horizon" as the steatite quarry 
on the Schuylkill below Lafayette Station. 

The belt of Manayunk mica schists and gneisses is 
-visible along the Schuylkill from the Falls to a point 
half-way between Manayunk and Lafayette Station, 
its north boundary being south of Chestnut Hill, and 
its south line in the vicinity of Germantown. There 
is a gradual transition of this belt on the north to the 
Chestnut Hill schists, and on the south to a micaceous 
feldspathic gneiss. There are extensive exposures of 
hornblendic slates between the Falls and Manayunk, 
on the line of the Schuylkill, and there is a small 
bed of steatite below the mouth of Cresheim Creek. 
The belt of Philadelphia mica schist and gneiss ex- 
tends from the Poquessing to Cobb's Creek, and from 
the Delaware to the Falls of Schuylkill. In the 
eastern part of the county it extends north beyond 
the county line. Exposures of it may be found on 
the Schuylkill from Gray's Ferry up, and on the Po- 
quessing, Pennepack, and Tacony Creeks. All through 
this belt, as in the other belts which have been de- 
scribed, the gneisses and schists are continually merg- 
ing into one another with an avoidance of sharp 
transitions. There are beds of hornblendic rock in 
several places, the largest along the Schuylkill above 
Columbia bridge, and on the river-bank at the south 
end of the river road, below the Strawberry Mansion. 
Above this point there is an alternation of feldspathic 
micaceous gneiss and slaty micaceous schists. This 
same alternation is observed below Columbia bridge 
to Gray's Ferry, with occasional lenticular beds of 
quartz in the mass. Feldspar predominates near 
Gray's Ferry, and forms deposits of kaoline, some of 
which are very pure and white. South of Gray's 
Ferry the micaceous gneiss is exposed along the river. 
At the western end of Market Street, on the east bank 
of Cobb's Creek, is a quarry of quartzose hornblendic 
gneiss, resembling that at Columbia bridge, and there 
is a quarry of compact gray gneiss at Frankford. 

1 Serpentine is a compact rock of a greenish drab color; it is an un- 
ratified hydrated silicate of magnesia in composition, while steatite is 
aoapstone, a magneBian silicate also, and allied to talc, mica, and asbes- 
tos. All these minerals are apt to occur in close proximity to one an- 
other, and serpentine is often, if not usually, accompanied with chromic 



The arrangement of the Delaware River gravels 
and clays illustrates the geological history of Phila- 
delphia. The Delaware flows in a southeast direction 
from Easton to a point a short distance below Tren- 
ton, where it turns and flows southwest to and beyond 
Philadelphia. This bend is a right angle, and is 
caused by the river striking the hilly outcrop of the 
New Jersey cretaceous formation. At an earlier 
period the river passed by or through much more of 
this marl or chalky formation than now. Its bed was 
apparently north and northwest of its present bed, 
and it must have worked its way along the line where 
the marl-beds joined the solid rock. The bed of the 
old river is probably marked by the limits of the 
Trenton gravel. This extends along the river from 
Yardleyville, on the Delaware, in Bucks County, 
above Trenton, to Darby Creek, below Philadelphia. 
Between Morrisville, opposite Trenton, and the mouth 
of the Poquessing Creek there are two sets of terraces 
and escarpments, marking an earlier course of the 
river, and showing that at one time it cut off across 
country without going around the long angle at Penns- 
bury. The belt of red clay and gravel which extends 
above the Trenton gravel is composed of the dfibris 
of all the geological formations existing along the 
course of the Delaware, together with those of the 
sands and conglomerates of the edge of the New 
Jersey Cretaceous and perhaps Tertiary formations 
also, undermined by the river and carried down by 
its floods in the process of time. Among these debris 
are large angular blocks of sandstone and quartzite. 
The clay is in many cases bedded with the gravel, or 
deposited in large masses, as, for example, one west 
of the Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane and 
several patches on this range east of the Schuylkill. 
Mr. Hall is not satisfied whether this deposit be the 
wash of the cretaceous beds or a deposit similar to 
the glacial clays of the Hudson River, but he seems 
to incline to the latter opinion. The age of the de- 
posit, he observes, is " unquestionably not remote from 
the glacial period. The material which forms much 
of the gravel with which the clay is associated owes 
its transport to glacial agencies. Whether the ice 
did or did not extend to this latitude may still be 
questioned; but I think there is little question as to 
the period when the angular blocks were brought 
south and deposited here with the gravel." Frag- 
ments of unmistakably fossiliferous rock — Oriskany 
sandstone and Helderberg slate — have been found in 
various places. As to the Bryn Mawr gravel, which 
only exists at an elevation of four hundred feet above 
tide, Mr. Hall does not know its origin, though he 
suggests it may be the remains of a Tertiary or Upper 
Cretaceous formation swept away by flood and gla- 
ciers, and that it is connected with the Cenozoic de- 
posits of New Jersey, the ancient Delaware having 
carried away all the deposits of this sort covering 
the intervening space, — that is to say, having once 
flowed with a current three hundred feet deep above 



22 



HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA. 



the present city of Philadelphia. But, in fact, Mr. 
Hall looks upon the Delaware River from Trenton to 
Chester as representing, in part at least, "the ancient 
coast line of the Atlantic Ocean." 

Professor Lesley, after summing up the results of 
the survey thus far, comparing the results attained by 
Professor Rogers in 1836-58 with those reached by Mr. 
Hall, and stating the difficulties attending the inves- 
tigation, concludes that it is impossible just now to 
locate the Philadelphia series of rocks exactly as to 
time and place in the general geological series ; " all 
speculation is therefore fruitless," he says, " and we 
are left in almost total ignorance of the real state of 
things." We only know that these deposits are enor- 
mously thick. " If it were not for these faults" 
(breaks in the strata), says Professor Lesley, " we 
could assert that from the kaoline outcrops at Gi-ay's 
Ferry up to the soapstone quarries above Manayunk 
the total pile of micaceous and hornblendic schists 
and gneisses measured about twenty-five thousand 
feet, representing in ancient times a mountain range 
as high as the Alps, now eroded nearly to a level no- 
where more than four hundred feet above sea-level." 
Allowing for every fault, he thinks the ancient thick- 
ness might have been equivalent to a level of ten 
thousand feet above tide. Nothing can more em- 
phatically illustrate the intensity of the geological 
disturbance at this point than the fact that the site of 
Philadelphia may at one time have occupied the side 
of a mountain range from ten thousand to twenty-five 
thousand feet high, and at another may have been two 
hundred or three hundred feet below the surface of an 
ocean. In regard to the glacial movement, the Penn- 
sylvania geologists are waiting for the report of Mr. 
Henry Carvill Lewis, who is now (racing the moraine 
deposits across Pennsylvania. But some interesting 
facts are already known on this subject so far as Phil- 
adelphia is concerned. The great Delaware glacier 
has been partly traced by the moraine which it left, 
ft crosses the Delaware River near Belvidere, below 
the Water Gap, in a straight line north of west to 
Beach Haven, on the North Branch of the Susque- 
hanna, and thente to Lycoming Creek near Rals- 
ston. It passed diagonally over mountains and val- 
leys without ever swerving from its course, crossing 
the top of the Kittatinny Mountain as if it despised 
to creep through the Water Gap at the mountain's 
foot. On the very top of the mountain, as a sign that 
it had been there, it left a block of Helderberg lime- 
stone more than six feet long. It had brought this 
from a valley below and five miles distant. The Oris- 
kany stone has been brought sixty miles down the 
valley of the Schuylkill and deposited in West Phila- 
delphia. Others have come down the Delaware 
through the Water Gap, yet Professor Lesley thinks 
it " more than doubtful" whether solid ice ever 
reached Philadelphia. "Floating fragments of the 
back country glaciers undoubtedly reached the Phila- 
delphia neighborhood." The professor also doubts if 



the ocean level ever rose sufficiently to explain the 
Bryn Mawr gravel, four hundred feet above tide. " It 
is, however, quite certain," he concludes, "that the 
Delaware River once flowed in a channel several 
hundred feet above its present bed, and has cut down 
since then to its present level. Its deposits of various 
ages are visible in terraces and patches at various ele- 
vations. This is in conformity with what we know 
of most of the rivers of the world," and the cases 
of the French rivers, the Seine and the Somme, 
are adduced in illustration. In the graveled ter- 
races of the latter river at Abbeville remains of pre- 
historic man have been found. "Similar gravels," 
says Professor Lesley in conclusion, "line the sides 
of the Delaware River valley, and human imple- 
ments of a remote antiquity have been found in 
them at Trenton." Attention has been called to the 
fact of such deposits in the alluvium and gravel by 
Kalm, the Swedish botanist, by Dr. Mease, in his 
" Picture of Philadelphia," and by John F. "Watson, 
the antiquarian. Kalm's account in 1749 is curious. 
It may be found in the second volume of his travels, 
where he says that he once called together the oldest 
inhabitants of the village of Raccoon (Gloucester Co., 
N. J.) to converse with them on the natural history 
of the country. There came to the meeting Mans 
Keen (Kyn), Aoke Helm, Peter Rambo, William 
Cobb, Sven Lock, and Eric Ragnilson. They told 
Kalm that whenever a well was dug in Raccoon, 
they always found at the depth of twenty or thirty 
feet great numbers of clam and oyster shells, some- 
times reeds and rushes, once a hank of flax. " Char- 
coal, firebrands, great branches, blocks, and Indian 
trowels had often been found very deep in the 
ground." Peter Rambo found marine animals, pet- 
rified or burnt wood, a huge spoon, and some bricks. 
Mans Keen, at the depth of forty feet, found chestnut 
wood, roots, and stalks, etc., and reported that at 
Elfsborg, when the Swedes first built their fort there, 
they found, twenty feet below the surface, broken 
earthen vessels and good whole bricks. 1 

In connection with the soil and rocks which under- 
laid the site of Philadelphia a great variety of min- 
erals were found. The binary compounds, sulphides 
and arsenides, were represented by a bastard graphite 
or plumbago which has been found at Robinson's Hill ; 
bismuthite exists in tourmaline in a granite vein in the 
masses of gneiss on the west side of Schuylkill, over 
against Fairmount Water- Works, and these rocks, as 
well as the Frankford gneiss, contain molybdenite. 
The Frankford gneiss also shows copper pyrites in 
pinchback brown crystals, as well as fluorite or fluor- 
spar in purplish crystalline masses. Menalcite exists- 
in a quarry near Columbia bridge and in the gneiss 
opposite Fairmount ; magnetite or lodestone at Chest- 
nut Hill ; crystals of limpid quartz in the soil at sev- 
eral places, in the Darby country particularly and 



1 Miekle, *' Reminiscences of Old Gloucester.' 



GEOLOGY AND ZOOLOGY. 



23 



in the peaty hollows and spring-heads at the foot of 
rocky hills ; smoky quartz from the Schuylkill across 
to Upper Darby ; flint chalcedony is found in connec- 
tion with serpentine rock, and in rolled fragments in 
the Schuylkill and Delaware gravel-beds. White 
hornstone exists along the Wissahiccon ; pseudo-mor- 
phous quartz in a quarry between the German town 
and old York roads; hyolite in the gneiss at Frank- 
ford and at the Wissahiccon paper-mills. Actinolite, 
in association with hornblende or serpentine, exists in 
talcose rocks at Columbia bridge and on the Wissa- 
hiccon ; asbestos and amianthus exist near the serpen- 
tine and steatite formations, as at Falls of Schuylkill ; 
it is found with crystalline quartz in a quarry of horn- 
blendic gneiss on the upper Schuylkill ; white beryl, 
in large, well-defined crystals, is found on the old 
York road, some distance out, and it is traced beyond 
Schuylkill to Delaware County ; a yellowish-green va- 
riety exists in the same place and from the Fairmount 
gneiss across to Darby Creek. Garnet is found in sev- 
eral places, red, brownish-red to black, near German- 
town, on Wissahiccon, at Flat Rock tunnel, Schuylkill 
Falls, Fairmount, Haverford, and in the bed of Darby 
Creek ; zircon on the old York road ; dark bottle-green 
crystals of epidote in the gneiss at Frankford, on Wis- 
sahiccon, and Falls of Schuylkill; zoisite in crystals 
and gray masses in the Schuylkill hornblende gneiss ; 
muscovite mica in West Philadelphia above Gray's 
Ferry, and elsewhere distributed largely ; green mica 
at Chestnut Hill ; moonstone in Schuylkill gneiss ; 
crystals of orthoclase feldspar much disseminated ; 
black tourmaline in the gneissic rocks in numerous 
outcroppings ; fibrolite in coarse fibres and columnar 
masses on the Wissahiccon ; cyanite in beautiful speci- 
mens at Darby Ferry and on Wissahiccon ; titanite in 
yellow and brown crystals in Schuylkill and Frank- 
ford gneiss ; staurolite in the soapstone beds ; lamo- 
nite at Columbia bridge; apophyte in the Frankford 
gneiss; talc in serpentine at Wissahiccon and Rox- 



borough ; apatite, at McKinstry's quarry, and alumin- 
ium sulphate in gneiss rock on Wissahiccon and at 
Hestonville. Calcites, marble, granular and compact 
limestone, are found at Columbia bridge and Flat 
Rock tunnel; building marble at Marble Hall and 
near Conshohocken ; malachite in bright emerald- 
green masses at Frankford quarry ; glockerite in 
brownish, stalactitous, resinous masses at Columbia 
bridge and Hestonville ; ochrcous clay, deeply tinged, 
in bed of Delaware at Tinicum. 

The minerals around Philadelphia include most of 
the compounds in which silica predominates, such as 
quartz, chalcedony, jasper, hornstone, spar, many in 
which alumina is the controlling component, as cor- 
undum, fibrolite, cyanite, staurolite, spinella, some 
of the magnesian earths, etc. The alkaline earths 
are well represented by mica, feldspar, chlorite, tour- 
maline, etc. ; the useful acidiferous minerals are 
found, and some of the metalliferous ones, as goethite, 
chromate of iron, cupreous bismuth, and some of the 
combustible minerals. The marsh of Tinicum Isl- 
and, and probably that of the lowlands northeast of it, 
overlies an ancient cedar or cypress swamp, and it is 
supposed that Fort Gotheborg (Gottenburg) was built 
by Governor Printz of the logs of these cypresses not 
then altogether submerged. 

The analyses of minerals and rocks in Philadelphia 
County, made under the auspices of the State Geo- 
logical Survey, while they present many points of 
interest to the expert and the scientist, are too techni- 
cal for the lay reader. These analyses show the exact 
character and chemical composition of the under- 
lying rocks of Philadelphia, and how and wherein 
the granite, gneisses, and schists of this locality varv 
from those found elsewhere, as well as how they differ 
from other specimens found in adjacent localities. 
We subjoin a table, made up from Dr. Genth's report, 
showing the results of analyses of some leading min- 
erals in the rocks of Philadelphia County : 



Ingrf.mknts. 



Silicic acid 

Alumina 

Potash 

Lime 

Ferric oxide 

Magnesia 

Lithia 

Soda 

Titanic acid 

Phosphoric acid 

Chromic oxide 

Mangauoue oxide.. 

Ferrous oxide 

Cupric oxide 



74.24 
13.71 
4 84 
1.08 
2H1 
1.(19 
trace. 
1,38 
0.36 
0.26 



i I 



.2— I p 



•z'jitj\ S en 



73.59 
11.37 
4.65 
1.62 
2 82 
0.77 
trace. 
2.07 
1.S0 
0.07 



trace. 



— ^ = 



41. R0 
10.30 

o.oc 

3.89 



•§ \ X 



26. 71 



0.27 

52 

trace. 



30.G0 
0.67 



29.50 
6.24 



trace 

7.29 1 0.90 



06.04 



z- ^ 






19 02 
11.68 

0.18 
0.21 
0.09 



,; 



9 25 



2.13 



3.17 
9.39 
trace. 
0.29 
2.20 



0.07 
10.44 
0.10 






40.50 
12.47 
0.53 

9.50 
9.15 
9.50 



C "3 

^r 5 



_r 












c 




fc£) 




" J E 
































£ > 




:* 


a 




m" 










o> 






r - 



43.S1 
27 52 
8.SIJ 
0.19 
7.30 ' 
1.77 ; 
trace. 
1.01 ; 0.56 I 
5.00 ! 3.78 
| 0.13 



59.31 
16.S5 

1.89 
5 51 
2.43 
2.68 



! 2 



2.57 
90 
0.28 



7.79 i 



. trace. 6.37 



79.001 50.70 
9.48 | 19.80 
1.54' 0.95 
0.72 194 
1.77 7.34 
0.70 1 5.86 

(race, .trace. 
1.83 1 3.55 



0.71 
0.19 



0.07 
1.49 



0.68 
0.30 

trace. 

trace. 
1.79 



«,« 



07.51 00.32 

14.40 12.00 

0.211 1.76 

4.20 5.25 

6.54 1 2.22 

4.47 4.13 



3.22 j 3.06 
2.01 2.11 
33 I 32 



0.07 ; trace. 
6.49 I 1.44 



50.02 
15.70 
O.90 
9.42 
2.13 
7.01 



40.25 
12.32 

1.02, 
11.02! 

3.05 
10.37 I 



3.79 
1.34 
0.20 



0.14 

7.49 



I 41 1 
1.50| 



24 



HISTORY OE PHILADELPHIA. 



While there are no conspicuous treatises on the 
specific subject and limited to the one locality, our 
information in regard to the natural history of Phila- 
delphia, its flora and fauna, is full and satisfactory. 
All the early descriptive writers have had much to 
say on this subject, as if it fascinated them. The 
works of the Bartrams, the Darlingtons, Kalm, 
Wilson, and others have added a touch of genius for 
pleasant writing to the attractiveness of the theme 
itself. The scientific treatises of Darlington are be- 
come classics, and every lover of flowers and birds 
has heard something charming about John and Wil- 
liam Bartram and Alexander Wilson. With Darling- 
ion and other writers on Chester, with the exhaustive 
way in which various naturalists have from time to 
time illustrated the botany and animal life of Bucks, 
Montgomery, and Chester Counties and the sections 
of New Jersey opposite to Philadelphia, it is easy to 
tell the whole story of the city's flora and fauna. The 
beauty and the strangeness, the wild luxuriance and 
shaded mysteries of the primeval forest, however, 
must be left to the imagination. The pen cannot 
describe them. In subsequent chapters will be found 
many quotations from the early writers, showing how 
vividly they were impressed with the landscape. 
That was wild without being savage. It was stately 
and imposing, yet had something of a parklike look, 
while the occasional birch-bark canoe along shore 
and the thin curling blue smoke from an Indian's 
lodge here and there did not disaccord. The under- 
growth was not greatly tangled, save in damp and 
springy places, and the immense proportion of full- 
grown trees in the primitive forest always lends to it 
a certain dignity and patriarchal aspect. In the 
swamps there were great white cedars, almost as ven- 
erable as the cypresses of the South, but one missed 
their bearding of gray Spanish moss. The stately 
elm spread and branched with full-grown vigor, and 
the oak was so much at home that Bartram enumer- 
ates twenty-one varieties as being found within the 
boundaries of Philadelphia County. Penn, in one of 
bis early letters, enumerates black walnut, cedar, 
cypress, chestnut, hickory, sassafras, beech, and the 
oaks as among the most useful native trees. Of fruits 
growing wild he mentions the white and black mul- 
berry, plums, strawberries, cranberries, huckleberries, 
etc. Apples and peaches were plentiful wherever the 
Indians had clearings, and Penn found them as good 
as any English peaches, " except the true Newington." 
His mind is not made up as to whether the fruit is 
native to the soil or not. Gabriel Thomas, in his 
little history of Pennsylvania and West New Jersey, 
after mentioning such wonders as the salamander 
stone (asbestos), "having Cotton in Veins within it, 
which will not consume in the Fire, though held there 
a long time," speaks of several sorts of wild fruits, — 

"as excellent Grapes, Bed, Black, White, Muscadel, and Fox, which upon 
frequent Experience have produe'd Choice Wine, being daily Cultivated 
by skilful Viuermt. . . . Walnuts, Chesmita, Filberts, Mockery Nnt«, 



Hartleberries, Mulberries, Rasberries, Strawberries, Cramberries, 
Plumbs of several surts, and many other Wild Fruits in great plenty, 
which are common and free for any to gather." " The common Planting 
Fruit-Trees are Apples, which from a Kernel (without Inoculation) will 
shoot up to be a large Tree, and produce very delicious, large and pleas- 
ant Fruit, of which much excellent Cyder is made, in taste resembling 
tliatin England press'd from Pippins and Pearmains,sold commonly for 
between Ten and Fifteen Shillings per Barrel, Pears, Peaches, &c, of 
which they distil a Liquor very much like the taste of Rumm, or Brandy, 
which they yearly make in great quantities. There are Quinces, Cher- 
ries Gooseberries, Currants, Squashes, Pumpkins, Water-Mellens, Musk- 
mellens, and other Fruit in great Numbers, which seldom fail of yield- 
ing great plenty. There are also many curious and excellent Physical 
Wild HerbB, Roots, and Drugs of great Yertue, and very sanative, as the 
Sassafras and Sarsaparilla, so much us'd in Diet Drinks for the Cure of 
the Venereal Disease, which makes the Indians, by a right application 
of them, as able Doctors and Surgeons as any in Europe, performing 
celebrated cures therewith, and by the use of some particular Plants 
only, find Remedy in all Swellings, Burnings, Cuts, &c. There grows 
also in great Plenty the Black Snake-Root(fam'd for its sometimes pre- 
serving, but of Ten curing the Plague, being infused only in Wine, Brandy, 
or Rumm), R,ittle-Snake Root, roke-Root,caird in England Jallop, with 
several other beneficial Herbs, Plants, and Roots, which Physicians have 
approved of, far exceeding in Nature and Vertue those of other Countries." 

Campanius, in his lively but careless narrative, 
speaks of the great quantity of rushes, with thick, 
strong roots, that grow in the marshes, and the hog's 
turnip, like the Jerusalem artichoke, that the Indians 
eat when their bread and meat give out. He speaks 
of " the fish-tree, which resembles box-wood, and 
smells like raw fish." It cannot be split, but melts 
away if fire be built around it. The Indians had 
peas, beans, and squashes before the white settlers 
came in, with gourds and melons. In the dialects of 
the Unamis, or Delawares of the lowlands, there 
were- many names for tree, shrub, and plant which 
they must have become familiar with in the vicinity 
of where Philadelphia now stands. Schau-we-min-shi 
means the red-beech ; ga-wunsch, the green brier; hob- 
be-nac, the potato ; Coaquonnoc, the site of Philadel- 
phia, is a corruption of Cu-we-quen-a-ku, "the grove 
of tall pines;" cu-wen-ha-sink (Cohocksink), meaning 
" where the pines grow," from cu-we, pine-tree, co-wa- 
nesque [ga-wun-shes-que), "overgrown with briers;" 
Hob-ben-i-sinJc, " where there are wild potatoes ;" Per- 
kiomen (Pak-ih-mo-mink), "place of cranberries," 
from pak-him, cranberry ; si-pu-o-man-di-can, " wild 
plums;" topi, the alder; tom-bic, crab-apple; woap-i- 
min-schi ("the white tree"), the chestnut-tree; woap- 
hallach, "wild hemp;" wech-que-tauk, the willow; wi- 
sach-gim, grapes ; win-ak, sassafras ; schind, spruce ; 
mitz-hack, gourd, squash, etc. ; ge-scund-hac, pump- 
kins ; musquem, corn ; mis-si-me-na, apple. 

A complete catalogue of plants in Philadelphia 
County would be out of place in a work of this character, 
but some mention may be made of prominent families, 
species, and varieties. The ferns were largely repre- 
sented in a place containing so many shady and moist 
spots, rocks, and hollows and spring-heads in the 
depths of groves. Among these were several of the 
horsetail ferns [Equisetacece), as the E. arvense, E. syl- 
vaticum, E. hyemale, or scouring rush ; the various poli- 
podia, including maiden-hair, the purple brake, the 
Dirksoniapunctilobula, or bladder-fern , ophioglossum, 



GEOLOGY AND ZOOLOGY. 



25 



and all the tribe of lycopods found in the latitude of 
Philadelphia ; the spagnida, phascidce, hypnidce, etc. 
There were full representations of the hcpaticw, or liver- 
wort family, etc. Of the general class of phaenoga- 
mous plants, the typical clematis (virgin's bower), tall 
anemone, the wind-flower, meadow-rue, crow-foot, 
buttercup, marsh marigold, wild columbine, lark- 
spur, and black snake-root represent the order Ra- 
nunculaeece ; the magnolias have the Magnolia glauca 
(sweetbay, growing in the southeast of the county) 
and the Liriodendron tulipifera, or tulip-tree, so often 
called poplar. Of the Anonacece, the papaw (Asimina 
triloba) is mentioned by the early writers, and is said 
to grow now on Darby Creek ; the moonseed (Meni- 
spermum) is common along streams ; the Berberis 
canadensis, the Podophyllum peltatum (May-apple), 
and Nelumbium luteum (water-chinquapin, introduced 
from Connecticut), represent two small families. Of 
the Nymphacea:, or water-lily family, Philadelphia 
used to be famous for its spatterdocks (yellow pond- 
lily, Nwphar advena), and its sweet water-lily [Nym- 
phaea odorata). The Sarracenia purpurea (pitcher- 
plant, very rare) is found in wet places about Tinicum ; 
the poppy family has the celandine and the blood- 
root to represent it. Among the Fumaracece are the 
common climbing fumitory, the Dicenira cucallaris 
(Dutchman's breeches), and the Cory dalis glauca. The 
Cruciferm have Nasturtium, officinale (common water- 
cress), N. sylvestre (yellow cress, peculiar to Philadel- 
phia low grounds), N. palustre (marsh cress), Carda- 
mine rhomboidea (spring cress), C. hirsuta, Arabis 
dentata, Barbarea proscox (scurvy grass), Sisymbrium 
canescens (tansy mustard), Sinapis alba et nigra (but all 
natives of Europe), Draba verna (whitlow grass), Le- 
pidum virginicum (wild pepper-grass), Capsella (shep- 
herd's purse), Herperis matronalis (rocket), and Lu- 
naria rediviva (honesty). The Isatis tinctoria, or 
woad, was introduced by Penn. Of the violet family, 
Philadelphia has Solea concolor (green violet), and 
Viola rotundifolia (round-leaved), V. lanceolata, V. 
blanda (sweet white), V. cucullata (common blue), V. 
palmata, V.villosa, V. sagittata, V.pedata (bird's-foot, 
grows on mica slate soils), V. Mahlenberghii (dog 
violet), V.pubescens, V. tricolor (pansy), and V. odo- 
rata. The sundew family (Droseraceoz) has D. fili- 
formis. The St. John's-wort family [Hypericaceoe) 
has Hypericum perforatum (common St. John's-wort), 
Ascyrum Crux Andrece (St. Andrew's cross), H. ellip- 
ticum, H. corymbosum, H. adpressum, H mutilum (the 
Parviflorum of Muhlenberg), H. Virginicum {Elodea 
Virginica of Nuttall). The pink family [Caryo- 
phyllacece) is represented by Dianthas armeria (Dept- 
ford pink), Saponaria officinalis (common soap-wort, 
"Bouncing Bet"), Silene slellata (starry campion), 
S. Pennsylvanica (common wild pink), S. antirrhina 
(sleepy catchfly), Agrostemma Oithago (corn-cockle), 
Stellaria media (chickweed), S. pubera, S. longifolia, 
Cerastiumvulgalum, C.viscosum, C.oblongifolium (north 
of Chestnut Hill), C.nutans. The purslane family (/w- 



talacacea) has Portulaca oleracea (common pursley), 
and Claytonia Virginica (spring beauty). The mal- 
lows [Malvacece) are represented by Malva rotundi- 
folia (common mallow), Abutilon, Avicenna, Hibiscus 
moschentos (Bow Creek swamp rose-mallow), H. tri- 
onum. The Linden or Basswood family (Tiliacece) 
has Tilia Americana (basswood ; not common, though 
the Swedes and Indians both gave it as the local name 
of water-courses). The Linum Virginianum (wild 
flax) is the only one of that family. The wood-sor- 
rels ( Oxalidaceos) have chiefly the Oxalis stricta, the 
yellow species. The Geraniacece (Cranesbill family) 
have the O. maculatum (the common plant) ; G. Caro- 
linianum. The Balsaminaceae (Balsam family) have 
the Impatiens pallida (Touch-me-not), /. fulva, and 
Tropceolum majus (from Europe). The sumachs have 
Rhus typhina (staghorn sumach), R. glabra, R. vene- 
nata, and R. toxicodendron (poison oak and poison 
sumach). The Vine family show Vitis labrusca (fox- 
grape), V. cestivalis (chicken grape), V. cordifolia 
(winter grape), V. vulpina (muscadine), and Ampelopsis 
quinquefolia (Virginia creeper, American ivy). The 
Buckthorn family (Rhamnaceoz) show Rhamnus cathar- 
ticus and Ceanothus Americanus (Jersey tea). The 
Celastraceaz yield Celastrus scandens (climbing bitter- 
sweet), Euonymus atropurpureus (burning bush), and 
E. Americanus (strawberry-tree). The Sapindacew 
yield Staphylea trifolia (the bladder-nut) ; Acer sac- 
charinum (sugar-maple); A. rubrum (swamp maple; 
this is the "fish-tree" of Campanius) ; Negundo acer- 
oides (box-elder). The Milkwort family furnishes 
Polygala sanguinea, P. cruciata, P. verticillata, P. arn- 
bigua, P. Senega (Seneca snake-root, referred to by 
Gabriel Thomas), P. polygama (P. rubella of Muhlen- 
berg). Of the Leguminosoz, there are Lupinus perennis 
(wild lupine, Chestnut Hill), Grotalaria sagittalis 
(rattle-box), Trifolium arvense (stone-clover), with T. 
pratense, T. repens, T. agrarium, and T.procumbens (all 
the useful clovers); Melilotus officinalis and alba; 
Medicago sativa (lucerne), Amorpha fruticosa ; Robinia 
pseudacacia (common locust), R. viscosa, Tephrosia 
Virginiana (goats' rue), Desmodium nudiflorum, D. 
acuminatum, D. rotundifolium, D. canescens, D. cuspi- 
datum, D. paniculatum, D. rigidum, D. Marylandicum, 
etc. ; Lespideza violacea (three sorts), L. procumbens t 
L. repens, etc. ; Vicia sativa (vetch) ; Lathyrus venosus 
and Palustris, L. latifolius, L. odoratus, deer arie- 
linum, Phaseolus perennis (wild bean), P. helvolus, P. 
vulgaris ; Apios tuberosa (ground-nut) ; Galactia gla- 
bella (milk-pea) ; Amphicarpea monoica ; Baptisia tinc- 
toria (wild indigo), B. Australis, Cercis Canadensis 
(Judas-tree), Cassia Marylandica (wild senna), C. 
chamozcrista (partridge pea), C. nictitans (wild sensi- 
tive-plant), and Gleditschia triacanthus (honey-locust). 
Of the Rose family there are Prunus Americana (wild 
plum), P. chicasa (chicasaw plum), P. spinosa (sloe), 
P. Pennsylvanica (wild cherry), P. avium, P. serotina, 
P. vulgaris, P. Virginiana; Spircea opulifolia (wine- 
bark), S. salicifofia (meadow-sweet), S. tommtosa ; Gil- 



26 



HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA. 



tenia trifoliata (Indian physic); Agrimonia eupatoria 
and parvifolia ; Potentitta Canadensis (common five- 
finger), P. palustris ; Fragaria Virginiana and vesca 
(wild strawberries) ; Rubus strigosus, P. occidentalis 
(red and black raspberry), R. villosus (blackberry), 
R. Canadensis (dewberry), R. hispidus, and R. cunei- 
folius ; Rosa Carolina, R. lucida (wild-rose), R. rubi- 
ginosa (sweet-brier) ; Crataegus cordata, C. oxyacanlhece 
(hawthorn), C. coccinece, C. tomentosa (blackthorn), C. 
parvifolia; Pyrin coronaria (crab-apple), P. arbuti- 
folia, P. malus, P. communis (the Seckel pear is a 
native of Philadelphia), P. Americana (mountain 
ash), Amelanchier Canadensis (service-berry), and 
("Jydonia vulgaris (quince). The Lytheraceos have 
Ammonia humilis, Lythrum lineare, Nesa?a verticillata, 
and Cuphea viscosissima. The Evening Primrose 
family (Onagracece) furnish Epilobium palustre, E. 
coloratum, Oenothera biennis (common primrose), (E. 
fruticosa (sun-drop), CE. pumilla, Gaura biennis, Lud- 
ivigia palustris (water parsley), and Circcca lutetiana 
(nightshade); Myriophyllum scabratum, M. ambiguum 
(pond plants), and Opuntia vulgaris. The Currant 
family is represented by Ribes hirtellum (wild goose- 
berry), R. Floridum (black currant), and R. rubrum. 
The Gourd family has Sicyos angulatus, Cucumis sa- 
tivns, C. melo, C. citrullus, Cucurbita pepo, C. melopepo, 
C. uurantia, and Lagcnaria vulgaris (all cultivated by 
Indians). Of the order of Saxifrages there are Saxi- 
fraga Virginiensis, S. Pennsylvania, 8. erosa (Penni- 
pack Creek), Heuchera Americana (alum-root), Mitella 
diphylla (bishop's cap), Chrysosplenium Americanum 
(golden saxifrage), Pea Virgiuica, and Philadelphus 
coronarius. The Witch-hazel family gives Hamamelis 
Virginica, Liguidambar styraciflua (sweet gum or 
liquidamber tree, used by the Swedes to make hubs 
for their cart-wheels, as Campanius notes). The 
Umbellifcra or Parsley family is represented in Phila- 
delphia by two species of pennyworts (Hydrocotyle 
Americana and umbellata), two species of black snake- 
root, the Eryngium yucccefolium (rattlesnake root), 
Daucus carola (carrot), Heracleum lanatum (cow- 
parsnip), Pastinaca sativa (common parsnip), Ar- 
chemora rigida (cowbane), Archangelica hirsuta and 
atrnpurpurea, Thaspium bardinode, Tliaspium atropur- 
pureum, Cicuta maculaia (musquash-root, water hem- 
lock), Sium lineare, Cryptotosnia Canadensis (hone- 
wort), Osmorrhiza longistylis (sweet-cicely), Conium 
maculatum (hemlock), Erigcnia bulbosa, Apium petro- 
sclinum (parsley), A. graveolens (celery ), A. fceniculum 
(fennel), Anathum graveolens (dill). The Ginseng 
order have Aralia spinosa (Hercules' club), A. race- 
mosa (spikenard), A. medicaulis (wild sarsaparilla), 
and A. trifolia (dwarf ginseng). The Dogwood fam- 
ily have Cornns Florida (common dogwood), C. 
sericea (silky cormel or kinikinnik), C. paniculata, C. 
alternifolia, and Nyssa inultiflora (black gum). The 
Honeysuckle family is represented by Lonicera sem- 
pervirens (trumpet honeysuckle), L. grata (woodbine), 
Diervilla Canadensis, Trinsteum perfoliihtum (horse 



gentian), Sambucus Canadensis (elder), Viburnum 
nudum, V. prunifolium (black haw), V. lentago (sheep- 
berry), V. dentatum (arrow-wood), V. acerifolium, V. 
opulus (snow-ball), and V. lantanoides (hobble-bush). 
; The Madder family has Galium aparine (goose-grass), 
j 67. asprellum, 67. obtusum, 67. triflorum, 67. pilosum, 
i 67. circazans and lanceolatum (wild liquorice) ; Diodia 
| teres (button-weed), Mitchella repens (partridge berry), 
and Oldenlandea ccerulea (bluets). Of the Composite 
order there are iron-weed ( Vernonia noveboracensis), 
Elephantopus Carolinianus, Liatris squarrosa, L. spi- 
cata, and L. dubia ; Eupatoreum purpureum (trumpet- 
weed), E. teucrifolium, E. rotundifolium, E. perfoli- 
atum (boneset), E. ageratoides (white snake-root), E. 
aromaticum ; Mikania scandens ; Conoclinium cceles- 
tinum (moist-flower), Tussilago farfara, Sericoc.arpus 
solidageus, S. coryzoides ; Aster and starworts, a dozen 
leading varieties ; Erigeron canadense (butter-weed), 
E. Philadelphicum (fleabane), E. annuum (sweet 
scabious), E. strigosum ; Diplopappus Unarifolius, D. 
umbellattts, and D. amygdalinus ; Bottonia asteroides 
(Bartram), Solidago squarrosa (golden-rod), S. bicolor, 
and fourteen other varieties; Chrysopsis mariana 
(golden aster), Inula helenium (elecampane), Polymnia 
Canadensis; Iva frutescens ; Ambrosia irijida (rag- 
weed), A. artemesia/olia (hogweed), Xanthium stru- 
marium (cockle-bur), A", spinosum, Eclipta procumbens, 
Ileliopsis la'vis (ox-eye), RudbecJcia (cone-flower), 
four varieties; Helianthiis (sunflower), five varieties, 
including H. tuberoxus (Jerusalem artichoke), and H. 
annuus (garden sunflower) ; Coreopsis trichinosperma, 
Bidens frondosa (beggar-lice), B. connata, B. cernua, 
B. chrysanthemoides, B. bipinnata (Spanish needles) ; 
Helenium autumuale (sneeze-weed), Morula cotula 
(Mayweed), Achillea millefolium (yarrow, or mill- 
foil), Leucanthemum vulgare (ox-eye daisy), Ma- 
tricaria parthenium (feverfew), Tanacetum vulgare 
(tansy), Artemisia, raudata (wormwood). A. vulgaris 
(mugwort), Gnaphalium polycephalium (everlasting), 
G. purpureum (purple cudweed) ; Filago Germanica, 
Erechtites hieracifolia, Cacalia a.triplicifolia (plantain), 
Senecio aureus (squaw-weed), Centaurea cyanus (blue- 
bottle), Girsium (thistle), seven varieties, including 
common thistle ( C. lanceolatum), and Canada thistle 
(C. arvc.nse) ; Lappa major (burdock), Cichorium 
intybus (chiccory), Hieracium scabrum (hawkweed), 
//. Gronovii, H. venosum (rattlesnake-weed), and H. 
paniculatum ; Nabalus albus, iV. altissimus, Taraxacum 
densleonis (dandelion), Lactuca elongata (wild let- 
tuce), Mulgedium acuminatum, Sonchus oleraceus (sow 
thistle) and S. asper. The Lobelia family have the 
cardinal flower, the great lobelia (L. syphilitica), the 
L. infiata (Indian tobacco), the blue lobelia (L. 
spicata), and L. Nuttallii. The Campanulas have the 
marsh bell-flower, the tall bell-flower, and Venus' 
looking-glass. Of the heaths there are Gaylussaccia 
frondosa and 67. resinosa (the blue and the black 
huckleberry), Vaucinium macrocarpon (cranberry). V. 
.ttanii.ueiiiii (squaw huckleberry), V. Pennsylvanicum, 



GEOLOGY AND ZOOLOGY. 



27 



and V. vacillans ; the Epigwa (trailing arbutus), 
Gaultheria procumbens (wintergreen teaberry), Leu- 
cothoe racemosa, Clethra alnifolia (white alder), Ktilmia 
latifolia (mountain laurel), K. angusti/olia (sheep 
laurel), Azalea viscosa (swamp honeysuckle), A. nudi- 
flora (Pinxter flower), Pyrola rotundifolia, P. ellip- 
iica, Chimaphila umbellata (pipsissewa), C. maculata, 
Monotropa uniflora (Indian pipe), and M. hypo- 
pitys (pine-sap). The Aquifoliacem or Holly fam- 
ily give specimens (but infrequent) of Ilex opaca 
(American holly), and I. verticillata (black alder). 
The Ebony family is represented by Diospyros Vir- 
tjiniana (persimmon); the plantains by Plantago 
major, P. lanceolata-, and P. virginica ; the primulas 
(primroses) by Dodecatheon Meadia (American cow- 
slip), Lysimachia stricta (loose-strife), L. quadrifolia 
and L. eiliata, and the pimpernel (Anagallis arvensis). 
There is one bladderwort, JJtricularia vulgaris; and 
one hignonia, the catalpa. The Orobanchaceoc have 
Epiphegus Virginiana (beech-drop), Conopholis Ameri- 
cana (cancer-root), and Aphyllon urciflorum. The 
Scropliulariacew have the common mullein, the moth 
mullein, the toad-flax (Linaria Canadensis and L. vul- 
garis, "butter-and-eggs"), Scrophularia nodosa, Che- 
lone glabra (turtle-head), Mimulus alatus and M. rin- 
gens (the monkey-flower ), Semianthusmicranthemoidcs, 
Veronica (speedwells, seven varieties), Buchnara 
Americana, Oerardia (five sorts), Castilleia coccinea. 
(scarlet painted cup), Pedicularis Canadensis (wood 
betony), P. lanceolata. The verbenas have V. hastolu 
(blue vervain) and the white variety. The Labiatte, 
or Mint family, are represented by the wood-sage or 
American germander, spearmint (Mentha viridis), 
peppermint and wild mint (M. Canadensis) ; Lycopus 
Virginicus (bugle-weed), Cunila mariana (dittany), 
Pycnanthemum incanum (basil), and five other sorts, 
Origanum vulgare (horse-mint or wild marjoram), 
Thymus serpyllum, T. vulgaris (thyme), Melissa officin- 
alis (balm), Sedeoma pulegioides (pennyroyal), Col- 
linsonia Canadensis (rich-weed, horse-balm), Salvia 
lyrata and S. officinalis (sage ; the fine flowering sages 
are from South America); Monardia fistulosa (wild 
bergamot), Lophanthus (hyssop), two sorts; Nrpeta 
cataria (catnip) and N. glechoma (ground ivy) ; Scu- 
tellaria (skull-cap), six sorts ; Marrubium vulgare (hore- 
hound), Leonurus cardiaca (motherwort). The Borage 
family have Echium vulgare, Onosmodium Virginianum, 
Lithospermu/m arvense (common gromwell), Myosotispa- 
luslris (forget-me-not), Cynoglossum officinale (hound's 
tongue), C. Virginicum, C. Morisoni (beggar's lice) ; of 
the Water-leaf family (Hydrophyllacea:) there are two 
sorts besides the Ellisia nyclelea and the Phaceliapar- 
vifolia; of the Polemoniacece, Polemoniareptans (Jacob's 
ladder) and Phlox maculata (wild sweet-william), P. 
pilosa and P. subulata, with Pyxidanthera barbulata. 
Of the Convolvulus family, Ipomea purpurea (morning- 
glory), I. pandurata, Convolvulus arpensis (bindweed), 
Cuscuta Gronovii (dodder). The Nightshade family 
have Solatium dulcamara (bitter-sweet), S. nigrum 



(nightshade), S. Carolinense (horse-nettle) ; Physalis 
pubescens and viscosa (ground cherry), Datura stra- 
monium (jimson-weed) ; the Solatium tuberosum (potato), 
S. melongena (egg-plant), Lycopersicum esculentum (to- 
mato), Atropa belladonna (deadly nightshade), Nico- 
tiana tabacum and Capsicum annuum (red pepper, Cay- 
enne) are all allied to this family and all naturalized in 
Philadelphia County. The Gentian family gives the 
centaury, fringed gentian, Oentiana saponaria (soap- 
wort gentian), G. Andrewsii (closed gentian), Bartonia 
tenella, and Obolaria Virginica; the family of Apocy- 
nacem gives the spreading dogbane and the Indian 
hemp (Apocynum Cannabinum). The Milkweed order 
yields Asclepias cornuti (common milkweed) and ten 
other varieties; the Olive family yields privet, fringe- 
tree ( Chionanthus Virginica), white-ash, red-ash, and 
black or elder-leaved ash. There are two sorts of 
Aristolochiacece, the asarabacca (wild ginger) and Aris- 
tolochia serpentaria (Virginia snake-root). The poke- 
weed family have Phytolacca decandea (common poke) ; 
the Goosefoot family, Chenopodium album (lamb's 
quarters), C. ambrosioides (Mexican tea worm-seed); 
the amaranth, Amuranthus albus, A. hybridus (pig- 
weed), A. spinosus — prince's feather ("love lies bleed- 
ing"), is of this family — and Acnida Cannabina. The 
Buckwheat family has Polygonum orientate, P. Penn- 
sylvanicum, P. persicaria (lady's thumb), and ten other 
sorts ; Fagopyrum esculentum (buckwheat), Rumex 
( water-dock), four varieties, R.acetocella (sheep-sorrel), 
Rheum rhaponicum (pie-plant) ; of the Lauracece there 
are sassafras and benzoin (spice-wood); of the Meze- 
reums, the Dirca palustris ; of the Santalaceoz, the Co- 
niandra umbellata ; of the mistletoes, Phoradendron 
flavescens. There are besides the Saururus cernuus, the 
Ceratophyllum demersum, Callitriche verna, Podostemon 
ceratophyllum, Euphorbia corollata (spurge), E. macu- 
lata, and E. hypericifolia, and the Acalypha gracilens. 
Of the Urticacece or Nettle family there are Ulmus 
fulva (slippery elm), U.Americana (native elm), Celtis 
occidcntalit (hackberry), Morus rubra (red mulberry), 
M. alba, M. papyri/era, Madura aurantiaca (osage 
orange, naturalized), Urtica dioica (stinging nettle), 
Laportea Canadensis, Pilea pumila (rich weed), Parie- 
taria Pennsylvanica (pellitory), Cannabis sativa (hemp), 
Stimulus lupidus (hop). Of the Plane-tree family, Plata- 
nus occiden talis (the sycamore or buttonwood-tree) ; of 
the walnuts, Juglans cinerea and J. nigra (buttern ut and 
black-walnut), Carya alba (shellbark), C.sulcata (hick- 
ory-nut), C. tomentosa and C. microcarpa (hickories), C. 
glabra (pig-nut hickory), C. amara (swamp hickory). 
Of the Oak family ( Cupiliferce) there are found in Phila- 
delphia the Querent obtusiloba (post-oak), Q. alba (white- 
oak), swamp chestnut-oak, swamp white-oak, yellow 
chestnut-oak, chinquapin-oak, willow-oak, laurel- 
oak, black-jack, scrub-oak (Q. i/icifolia), Spanish oak, 
pin-oak, quercitron-oak ( Q. tinctoria), scarlet-oak, red- 
oak, the chestnut, chinquapin, beech, hazel-nut, and 
horn-beam or ironwood. Of the Myricacecc are the 
wax-myrtle (bayberry) •and the sweet fern ; of the 



28 



HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA. 



Birches, Betula nigra (red-birch), and Alnus serrulata 
(smooth alder) ; of the Willow family (Salicacece), 
there are the Salix tristis (dwarf gray-willow), the 
low bush, weeping, basket, or osier, silky-leaved, 
petiolate, black, white, and brittle willows ; the quiv- 
ering aspen, large-toothed aspen, Athenian, Lom- 
bardy, and silver poplar (naturalized since 1785), and 
the Populus candidans (Balm of Gilead). Of the 
Coniferoz, there are Pinus inops (Jersey pine), P. rigida 
{pitch-pine), P. strobus (white-pine), Abies Canadensis 
(hemlock-spruce), Thuja occidentalis (American arbor- 
vitse), C'upressus thyoides (white-cedar), and the Juni- 
perus communis and Virginiana (savin). Of the Arum 
family there are Arisema triphyllum (Indian turnip), 
and Dracontium, the skunk-cabbage, the golden-club, 
and the Calamus or sweet-flag ; of the Cat- tails, Typha 
latifolia, Sparganium simplex, and S. ramosum ; of the 
Duck-weeds, Lemna minor and L. polyrrhiza ; of the 
Pond-weeds (Naiadacew), Naias flexilis, Ruppia mari- 
tima, Potamogetonnatans, P. perfoliatum, P. lucens, etc. ; 
of the Alismacece, Alismaplantago, Sagittaria variabilis; 
of the Frog-bits, Anacharsis Canadensis and Vallisneria 
spiralis (eel-grass) ; of the Orchid family, Orchis spec- 
tabilis, Oymnadenia tridentata and flava, five sorts of 
Plantathera, Ooodyerapubeseens, Spiranthes gracilis and 
cernua ; three sorts of Pogonia, Calopogon pulchellus, 
Mycrostyllis ophioglossoides, Liparis liliifolia, Coral/or- 
rhiza, three varieties; Aplectrum hyemale (Adam-and- 
Eve), Cypripedium pubescens, and acaule (lady's slip- 
per). Of the Amaryllises, there is Hyposcys erecta 
(star-grass); of the Blood worts, Aleiris farinosa ; of 
the Irises, the blue flag and fleur-de-luce, the Bermuda 
grass, the crocus, blackberry lily, and tiger-flower; 
of the Yams, Dioscorea villosa; of the Smilaxes, S. 
rotundifolia (greenbrier), 8. glauca, and S. herbacea 
(carrion-flower) ; Trillium cernuum (wake-robin), and 
Madeola Virginiea (Indian cucumber). Of the Lily 
family there are Asparagus officinalis, Polygonaluln 
giganteum (Solomon's seal), Smilacina racemosa, S. 
Canadensis, Convallaria majalis (lily of the valley), 
day-lily, Star-of-Bethlehem, wild leek, field garlic, 
meadow garlic, Lilium Philadelphicuni, L. Canadense, 
L. superbum (Turk's cap), Erythronium Americanum ; 
of the Colchicum family, there are the bellwort, the 
bunch-flower, the white hellebore, the Amianthium 
miiscoetoxicum, the Chamcelirium luteum, and Tofieldia 
pubens. Of the Rush family, Juncus effusus (common 
rush), and six others; of the Pontideriaceos, Pontideria 
condata, the mud-plantain, and the water star-grass; 
of the Spiderworts, Commelyna Virginiea and Trades- 
cantia Virginiea; of the Xyridaceos, Xyris Caroliniana; 
of the Pipeworts, Eriocaulon gnaphalodes. The Sedges 
are represented by five varieties of Cyperus, seven of 
Scirpus, five of Fimbristylis, thirty-three of Garex, be- 
sides Dulchium spathaceum, Eleocharis obtusa, E. tenuis, 
and E. acicularw, and Eriophorum Virginicum; Cype- 
rus rotundus is nut-grass ; the carices do not vary much 
in appearance, though the catalogue of their varieties 
in Gray's Manual occupies nearly thirty pages. Of 



the family of Oraminece, or grasses, Philadelphia was 
the habitat of a great many genera and species ; there 
were two Leersice, three Agrostes, five Muhlenbergioz, 
five Pocs, three sorts of Elymus, fifteen of Panieum, 
and three of Andropogon ; among these were rice- 
grass, fly-catch, water-oats, meadow fox-tail, timothy, 
drop-seed grass, bent-grass, thin-grass, orchard-grass, 
herd-grass, poverty-grass, blue-grass, green-grass, 
cheat, wild-oats, bur-grass, red-top, nimble will, hair- 
grass, joint-grass, rattlesnake-grass, spear-grass, wire- 
grass, meadow fescue, darnel, couch-grass, wild-rye, 
sweet-scented vernal grass, millet, bottle-grass, sesame, 
and broom-corn. 

Of the animals, birds, and fishes, the reptiles and 
insects of Philadelphia, the old writers make much 
mention, but it is still rather of a confused sort. Penn 
dwells upon the elk and deer, the bears, beavers, rac- 
coons, rabbits, and squirrels, the turkeys, pheasants, 
pigeons, and partridges, and the water-fowl. The 
abundance of flsh struck him, and he frequently com- 
mented upon them. Gabriel Thomas names "swans, 
duck, teal, geese, divers, brands, snipe, curlew, eagles, 
Turkies (of Forty or Fifty Pound Weight), Pheasants, 
Partridges, Pigeons, Heathbirds, Blackbirds, and the 
strange and remarkable fowl called (in these parts) 
the Mocking-Bird, that Imitates all sorts of Birds in 
their various Notes. And for Fish, there are prodigious 
quantities of most sorts, viz. : Shadd, Cat-Heads, Sheep- 
Heads, Herrings, Smelts, Roach, Eels, Perch. As also 
the large sort of Fish, as Whales (of which a great deal 
of Oyl is made), Salmon, Trout, Sturgeon, Rock, Oys- 
ters (some six Inches long), Crabs, Cockles (some as big 
as Stewing Oysters, of which are made a Choice soupe 
or Broth), Canok, and Mussels, with many other sorts 
of fish, which would be too tedious to insert. There are 
several sorts of wild Beasts of great Profit, and good 
Food, viz. : Panthers, Wolves, Fitchow, Deer, Beaver, 
Otter, Hares, Musk-Rats, Minks, Wild Cats, Foxes, 
Raccoons, Rabbits, and that strange creature, the 
Possum, she having a false Belly to swallow her Young 
ones, by which means she preserveth them from dan- 
ger when anything comes to disturb them. There are 
also Bears, some Wolves, are pretty well destroyed by 
the Indians for the sake of the Reward given them 
by the Christian for that service. Here is also that 
Remarkable Creature, the Flying Squirrel, having a 
kind of Skinny Wings, almost like those of the Batt, 
though it hath the like Hair and Colour of the Com- 
mon Squirrel, but is much less in Bodily Substance. 
I have (myself) seen it fly from one Tree to another 
in the Woods, but how long it can maintain its Flight 
is not yet exactly known. There are in the Woods 
abundance of Red Deer (vulgarly called Stags), 
for I have bought of an Indian a whole Buck (both 
Skin and Carcass) for two Gills of Gunpowder. 
There are vast Numbers of other Wild Creatures, 
as Elk, Buffaloes, etc., all which, as well Beasts, Fowl, 
and Fish, are free and common to any Person who can 
shoot or take them, without any lett, hinderance, or 



GEOLOGY AND ZOOLOGY. 



29 



opposition whatsoever. There are among other vari- 
ous sorts of Frogs, the Bull-Frog, which makes a 
roaring noise, hardly to be distinguished from that 
well known of the Beast from whom it takes its 
Name. There is another sort of Frog that crawls 
up to the tops of Trees, there seeming to imitate the 
Notes of several Birds, with many other strange and 
various Creatures, which would take up too much 
room here to mention." Campanius mentions tor- 
toises, sturgeons, and whales. The rattlesnake, he 
says, has a head like a dog, " and can bite a man's 
leg off as clear as if it had been hewn down with an 
axe." The "sea-spiders" (king crab) are "as large 
as tortoises, and like them have houses over them of 
a. kind of yellow horn. They have many feet, and 
their tails are half an ell long, and made like a three- 
edged saw, with which the hardest trees may be sawed 
down." The "tarm-fish" has no head, and is like a 
smooth rope, one-quarter of a yard in length and four 
fingers thick, and somewhat bowed in the middle. 
At each of the four corners there runs out a small 
bowel three yards long and as thick as coarse twine. 
" With two of these bowels they suck in their food, 
and with the other two eject it from them" (a sort of 
medusa, probably). There is also a devil-fish, called 
by the Indians " manitto," which plunges deep in the 
water and spouts like a whale. 

That whales once frequented the Delaware does not 
admit of question. De Vries established the colony 
at Swaanendael as a point d'appui for the whale fish- 
ery ; Vanderdonck says these mammals were fre- 
quently stranded on the shores and captured by 
Indians and settlers ; Lambrechtsen mentions cod, 
tunny, and whale as among the fish of the North and 
South Rivers ; Du Simitiere's manuscripts contain an 
account of a whale that came up to Philadelphia. It 
will be noticed that Thomas mentions buffaloes as 
among the animals of Eastern Pennsylvania ; the 
same thing is done by the author of the so-called 
" Plantagenet's Albion" pamphlet, and by Vander- 
donck, the latter saying that " the buffaloes keep to- 
wards the southwest, where few people go." It has 
been said very positively that the American bison 
never came east of the Allegheny Mountains, and 
the general silence of early naturalists on the subject 
seems to make the statement probable. But the 
cause assigned, that the bison, a prairie animal, 
avoids mountains, is no longer admissible, for we 
now know that he hides in the deepest valleys of 
the B,ocky Mountains, and climbs cliffs as daringly 
as he storms the snow-drifts. Besides, the bison 
could easily have passed round the mountains by 
way of the northern lakes, descending the Hudson, 
Delaware, and Susquehanna. The animal's frequent- 
ing-place was doubtless the treeless plains ; but he 
may have easily come to visit, though not to stay, in 
the East. Evidently the Delaware Indians knew of 
the beast ; they had a name for him (xiasUle), and they 
called one of the branches of the Allegheny Biver 



Sissilie Hanna, " the stream where the buffaloes re- 
sort." The city of Buffalo, on Lake Erie, would 
seem to have its name from the resort of these ani- 
mals, and there are four townships and one town called 
Buffalo in Pennsylvania. One Buffalo Creek, in this 
State, empties into the Juniata ; another into the 
Susquehanna, both east of the Alleghenies; the name 
is also found in North Carolina, Georgia, and Mary- 
land, at points east of the mountains. This is posi- 
tive evidence, so far as the names of places go, in 
favor of eastern migrations of the bison ; the non- 
mention of the animal by early writers is negative 
evidence against such migrations. 

It is not necessary to present a full account of the 
zoology of Philadelphia County. Dr. Michener, B. 
H. Warren, Prof. Cope, Alexander Wilson, Spencer F. 
Baird, John Cassin, Dr. Joseph Thomas, Mr. Brewer, 
Mr. Barnard, etc., have collected all the information 
on the subject that is desirable, and a hundred times- 
more than can be used here. Of the insectivora 
there are several bats, five shrews, and two moles, 
which are named ; of the carnivora there are the pan- 
ther, {Felis concolor), Lynx rufus (American wildcat), 
L. Canadensis/ the American wolf, red fox, gray fox, 
weasels (three sorts), the mink, the ferret, the otter, 
the skunk, the raccoon, and the black bear. Of the 
marsupials, only the opossum ; of the rodents, the 
squirrel family, including the cat, gray, red, black, 
and flying squirrels, the ground-squirrel or chip- 
munk, and the ground-hog or American marmot ; of 
the muridw. or rat family, there were the beaver, the 
musk-rat, the jumping mouse, the black and brown 
rats, the wood-rat, the house-mouse, field-mouse, 
meadow-mouse, and upland meadow mouse ; of the 
porcupine family there was the American hedgehog ; 
of the rabbits, two, the white and the gray. Of ru- 
minants, the elk, the red deer, the buffalo (besides 
domesticated animals), the horse, and (among fossils 
near by in Chester County and in New Jersey) the 
Elepha* primogenius and the mastodon. Among the 
birds Dr. Michener and Mr. Barnard have recognized 
two hundred species as belonging to the vicinity of 
Philadelphia, of which nearly a fourth might still be 
found. The vultures are represented by the turkey- 
buzzard; the falcons or hawks by the duck-hawk, the 
pigeon-hawk, the sparrow-hawk, the goshawk, and 
seven other species, the kite, the marsh-hawk, the 
golden and the white-headed eagle, and the fish-hawk. 
The owls have the barn-owl, the great horned owl, the 
screech, the long-eared, the short-eared, the barred, 
" saw-whet," and snowy owls ; the cuckoos have 
two varieties ; the woodpeckers eight varieties ; the 
humming-birds have only one sort; there are five 
varieties of swallows ; the whip-poor-will and shrike, 
or night-hawk, are common, and there are the king- 
fisher and the king-bird. There are eight sorts of 
fly-catchers, including the pewee ; six varieties of the 
thrush, including the robin and the wood and her- 
mit thrush ; two kinds of wren, the blue-bird, the 



30 



HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA. 



titlark and the black and white creeper, the yellow- 
throat, the redstart, and the three water thrushes 
(sciurus). Of the warblers twenty -four varieties 
have been specified ; of the vireos and fly-catchers 
twelve varieties ; the butcher-bird and the mocking- 
bird were much more frequent in former times, but 
the cat-bird holds its own, though the brown thrush 
(Mimus rufus) is getting scarce. The marsh wren is 
common, but not so the other thryothori. The gray 
creeper, the nut-hatcher, the titmouses and chicka- 
dees, the larks, tanagers, red-birds, grosbeaks are 
common ; of the finches and cross-bills several va- 
rieties are named ; there are thirteen named sorts 
of sparrows, four grosbeaks, two orioles, two black- 
birds, two sorts of crows; the jay, turtle-dove, wild 
pigeon, pheasant, partridge ; twelve cranes, herons, 
bitterns, and ibises ; three sorts of the plover ; the 
kildeer, phalarope, woodcock ; fifteen species of 
snipe, sand-pipers, etc., and seven or eight sorts of 
rail, curlew, and marsh-hen. The coot, swan, wild- 
goose, brant, and loon used to be very abundant 
on the Delaware — now scarce; the mallard, black 
duck, sprig-tail, teal, shoveler, summer duck, scaup, 
canvas-back, red-head, buffel-head, spine-tail, shell- 
drake, merganser are still shot, and in winter the 
Delaware is still frequented by five or six varieties of 
gulls and three sorts of grebes. 

The reptiles of Philadelphia were never very for- 
midable, but still, numerous. Sixteen varieties of 
salamander are catalogued, and eleven toads and 
frogs, including all the Bufonidce, Iiylidw, and Ran- 
idce. Of the ophidians, two were venomous, — the 
banded rattlesnake ( Crotalus horridus) and the cop- 
perhead. The other snakes were the worm snake, 
ring snake, chain snake, house snake, grass snake, 
black snake, garter snake, ribbon snake, yellow-bel- 
lied snake, water snake, and spotted and black viper. 
There was but one lizard, but nine tortoises, including 
the snappers. 

The fish include ten varieties of perch (with the 
pike), four darters, a miller's thumb, a stickleback, 
a gar, trout, salmon, a dozen chubs, dace, shiners, etc., 
in the small streams; seven or eight mullets or suckers, 
six sorts of cat-fish, one variety of eel, two of stur- 
geon, three lampreys, etc. Of the mollusca there is 
no end of slugs and snails, pupadce, etc., eighty-six 
varieties being catalogued, thirty or forty sorts of 
mussels and pectino-branchiates, and this is in addi- 
tion to the salt-water shell-fish. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE INDIANS. 



When Henry Hudson, in 1609, after having exam- 
ined and sounded the entrance to Delaware Bay, en- 
tered and explored New York Bay and the North or 
Hudson River, he encountered the natives of the 
country, who called themselves Mohegans or Mohe- 



canne. These savages had never seen white men ; 
but after the first surprise and wonder, they met the 
strangers with the utmost confidence, and made a 
graceful display of their inexhaustible, generous hos- 
pitality, bestowing presents and spreading before the 
new-comers the choicest treasures of their little store. 
This visit of Hudson's seems to have made an indel- 
ible impression upon the Indians. The incident was 
handed down in vivid traditions from generation to 
generation, and Heckewelder heard an account of it 
from the Pennsylvania Indians, among whom he was 
doing his gentle duties as a missionary. The ship 
was mistaken for a supernatural visitant, and its cap- 
tain and crew were esteemed as being far superior to 
earthly men. The simple natives fancied themselves 
blessed with the presence of some great Manitou, and 
they did their utmost to honor the occasion and pro- 
pitiate the powerful strangers, whose house had white 
wings and at whose command were the resources of 
the elements, the lightning and the thunder. The 
Indians put on their gala-day costumes and bravest 
paint, brought out their fetishes and amulets, and 
prepared a sacrifice, a feast, and a dance. Hudson, 
deus ex machind, not to be outdone, met the natives 
in ceremonious state, furnished them with draughts 
of nectar, — in this case it was true Holland schnapps, 
poured forth from a junk-bottle, "fire-water," as the 
deluded savages most appropriately denominated it, 
— and made them drunk after the ancient English 
fashion. It is a point in the unconscious satire of 
history that the Indians of the temperate zone of 
North America were not sufficiently " civilized" to 
have discovered the means of intoxicating themselves 
by the manufacture of fermented or distilled liquors. 
The Mexicans had their pulque, the South American 
Indians their cushaw beer and wine, the Mobilians 
their "black drink," the Peruvians their coca and 
probably their "pisco" also, but the Algonkins and 
their kindred had no other drink but water, and their 
sole stimulant was tobacco, in the fumes of which they 
quieted their brains after the fullness of the banquet, 
or when the excitement of the chase or the war-path 
was over. This tobacco, and their bronze and clay 
pipes, handsomely ornamented, the Indians put at 
the service of their visitors, and it may be remarked, 
in proof of the universal reciprocity of service in ex- 
changes, that if the whites taught the Indians the 
use of rum and introduced the smallpox among them, 
the Indians in return have taught the whole world, 
civilized and uncivilized, how to smoke tobacco. 

The Indians who received Hudson were of the same 
nation as those who dwelt upon both sides of the Del- 
aware Bay and River. They called themselves Lenni 
Lenape, or Renni Renappi, a name said to signify the 
" original people" or its equivalent. 1 The river upon 

1 There is some doubt as to whether Lenni Lenape is to be taken as 
meaning autochthones in an abstract sense, or whether it means, in a 
personal way, the boast that " we are the people," the men par excel- 
lence. 



THE INDIANS. 



31 



whose banks some of them dwelt they called after 
their own name, Lenape Wihittuck, Lenape River, 
and when the English decided that the name of the 
river should be Delaware they translated the Indian 
generic title into Delaware also, and so the tribe are 
called Delawares to this day. Between Hudson's , 
voyage and the beginning of the eighteenth century 
there is frequent contemporary mention of the Lenape 
Indians and their kinsmen, the Nanticokes, and their 
neighbors, the Mengwes, Minquas, or Mingoes, who 
were known in Maryland as the Susquehannas. and 
whose remnant afterwards became known in Pennsyl- 
vania as the Conestogas. Capt. Cornelis Hendrickson, 
who explored part of the Delaware in 1615-16 in a 
small yacht built by Capt. Block in New York Harbor '■ 
to replace his vessel which had been burned, 1 reported 
having met and traded with the Minquas, from whose 
bonds he redeemed three prisoners belonging to the 
Dutch trading company at Fort Nassau, up the Hud- 
son. It is probable that Hendrickson encountered 
these natives at Christina or Upland Creek. His 
intercourse with them was the beginning of the Dela- 
ware River fur trade. 

In 1623, Capt. Cornelis Jacobson Mey built Fort 
Nassau on the east side of the Delaware River, just 
below where Philadelphia now stands. Mey was 
agent for the Dutch West India Company, and the 
fort was intended as a trading-post. It was alternately 
occupied or deserted as trade demands required. In 
1633, De Vries found the Indians in possession of it. 
De Vries himself, acting for some members of the 
Dutch Company, had bought from thelndians bodies 
of land on both sides of Delaware Bay near the 
ocean, and in 1630 a colony was planted under his 
direction at the Horekills or Lewes Creek, in Lower 
Delaware, and called Swaanendael, or Swanvale, a 
house being built and surrounded with palisades, to 
which the name of " Fort Oplandt" was given. In 
spite of the land purchase the garrison of this fort 
got into trouble with the Indians, and the entire 
party, some thirty men, were massacred. This land at 
Swaanendael was bought by Hossett and Heysen, the 
commissary and captain of the expedition organized 
by De Vries, on May 5, 1631, from Sannoowouns, Wie- 
wit, Pemhacke, Mekowetick, Teehepewwya, Matha- 
raen, Sacoock, Anchoopoen, Janqucns, and Pokahake, 
who were either Lenape or Nanticoke Indians. De 
Vries, humane as he was intelligent, saw at once on his 
return to the Delaware that the massacre at Fort Op- 
landt was provoked by some act of the garrison or its 
commander. He did not care to investigate too closely 
a deed which was irreparable, and which he was 
assured in his own consciousness must have originated 
in some brutality or debauchery of his own people, 
so he simply called the Indians together and made 
a treaty of peace with them, sealing it with presents. 2 

1 See next chapter. 

2 De Vries liuil witnessed with extreme disgust the cruelty and bad Faith 
of the whites in their dealings with the Indians. He attributed the mas- 



At the time of De Vries' plantation, and his expe- 
dition afterwards in 1633 up the Delaware, the Min- 
quas appear to have been at war with the Lenapes on 
the other side of the river, and this may in part ex- 
plain the hostile attitude in which the navigator 
found the Indians at several points. This fact will 
also explain the readiness of the sachems of New 
Jersey in that year to sell to Arent Corssen the land 
on the westside of the river on which Fort Beversrede 
was afterwards erected. In 1638 the Swedes came 
to the Delaware, and having established themselves 
at Christina and subsequently at other points, began 
an active and intimate trade with the Indians for 
furs. They too bought the land which they occupied, 
and appear to have lived with the savages on very 
familiar terms, for we find that they supplied inter- 
preters for many years, supplanted the Dutch in the 
fur trade, and annually visited the Minquas in their 
strongholds in Cecil County and on the Susquehanna. 
When the Iroquois came to attack the Susquehan- 
nocks in their castle in 1662, they were baffled by a 
regular fort, constructed in European style by Swe- 
dish engineers, with bastions and mounted cannon. 3 
The Swedish Governors appear to have understood 
how to conciliate the Indians effectively, and were 
much preferred to the Dutch. The natives aided 
Pappegoya to put on shore the last party of Swedish 
immigrants who arrived in the Delaware after the 
subjugation of the colony by Stuyvesant. The in- 
structions by Queen Christina's government to both 
Printz and Risingh were very minute in their in- 
junction of friendliness and good conduct to the 
Indians. 

De Laet, the contemporary Dutch historian, who 
was also one of the directors of the Dutch West In- 
dia Company, and one of the patrons for whom 
De Vries purchased Indian titles on the Delaware, 
names some of the Indian bands in that section in 
his volume, Novus Orbis. Campanius states that the 
Swedes in his time had no intercourse except with 
"the black and white Mengwes," and he holds that 
the Lenapes were cannibals, in proof of which he 
adduces a story which is fully as authentic as his ac- 
count of the rattlesnake. This author also speaks of 



sacre of Hossett and his men to " mere jangling with the Indians" (in 
his interesting journals), and he himself had experience of Indian loy- 
alty and kindness when kindly treated. Tho suggestion of debauchery 
grows out of the name given by the Dutch to Lewes Creek, which, says 
Smith, the historian of New Jersey, on the authority of a manuscript 
in the British Museum giving a Swedish account of the early settle- 
ments on the Delaware, " had its rise from the liberality of the Indians 
for lavishly prostituting, especially at that place, their maidens and 
daughters to our Hollanders." Hossett's party had no women with 
them, and it will be remembered that one of tho earliest complaints of 
the Delawares to Tenii's government was founded upon the charge that 
a settler's servants had made the males drunkand then debauched then- 
wives. The complaisance which, according to Cadwallader Colden, the 
Indians extended to tho whites on their first arrival might easily become 
a grave indignity when the whites were discovered to be no longer su- 
perior beings, but men like themselves. To meet with Amphitryons 
visitors must not cease to he Jupiters. 

;1 Parkman," Jesuits in North America, 1 ' p. 442. 



32 



HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA. 



the broad faces, flat noses, large lips, and square teeth 
of the savages, adding that they often had their heads 
artificially flattened in infancy. The warriors some- 
times wore necklaces made of thumbs of their ene- 
mies cut off after battle ; the Indians (again Cam- 
panius is responsible) ate just when they happened 
to be hungry ; they wore head-dresses of feathers and 
snake-skins, and fed upon bear's meat, venison, birds, 
fish, and maize, either in the shape of hominy or 
]}one. When they traveled they mixed their cakes 
with tobacco juice to quench thirst. They painted 
their bodies with river mud or ochreous clays, and 
made no use of salt except as an antidote to epi- 
lepsy. In short, Campanius is utterly untrustworthy 
as an observer, although he is sensational enough as 
a raconteur. De Laet says the earth was their table 
as well as their bed, — •" humo strati, aut super storeas 
junceas, somnum pariter aigue cibum capiunt,'' — while 
Campanius (giving Pastorius as his authority, how- 
ever) absurdly makes them out as being such churls 
as to mount and sit cross-legged upon tables in Chris- 
tian houses to which they were asked; they never, in 
fact, sitting cross-legged under any circumstances. 
We learn from De Vries that the Indians used the 
reed-pipe as a musical instrument, and Penn men- 
tions the tambourine. De Laet seems to suppose that 
they had no religion. " Nullus ipsis religioiris sensus, 
nulla Dei veneratio," he says, a singular misconcep- 
tion. George Alsop, in his little tract called " A 
Character of the Province of Maryland" (London, 
1(566), devotes a chapter to " A Relation of the Cus- 
toms, Manners, Absurdities, and Religion of the Sus- 
quehanock Indians in and near Maryland." These 
were the Mengwes of Campanius, and the Susquesa- 
hannoughs of Capt. Smith. Alsop says they are re- 
garded as "the most Noble and Heroick Nation of 
Indians that dwell upon the confines of America; 
also are so allowed and lookt upon by the rest of the 
Indians, by a submission and tributary acknowledg- 
ment, being a people cast into the mould of a most 
large and warlike deportment, the men being for the 
most part seven foot high in altitude and in magni- 
tude and bulk suitable to so high a pitch ; their voyce 
large and hollow, as ascending out of a Cave, their 
gate and behavior straight, steady, and majestick, 
treading on the Earth with as much pride, contempt, 
and disdain to so sordid a Centre as can be imagined 
from a creature derived from the same mould and 
Earth." They go naked summer and winter, says 
Alsop, " only where shame leads them by a natural 
instinct to be reservedly modest, there they become 
cover'd. The formality of Jezabel's artificial Glory is 
much courted and followed by these Indians, only in 
matter of colours (I conceive) they differ." They 
paint their faces in alternate streaks of different 
colors, and Alsop thinks, with other early writers, 
that their skins are naturally white but changed to 
red and cinnamon-brown by the use of pigments. 
Their hair is 'black, long, and harsh," and they do 



not permit it to grow anywhere except upon the head. 
The Susquehannas tattooed their arms and breasts 
with their different totems, "the picture of the Devil, 
Bears, Tigers, and Panthers," says Alsop. They are 
great warriors, always at war, and keep their neigh- 
bors in subjection. Their government is complex 
and hard to make out; " all that ever I could observe 
in them as to this matter is, that he that is most 
cruelly Valorous is accounted the most Noble,'' which 
is a very good approximation of the fact that the war- 
chief derives his rank or influence from his deeds. 
Our author adds that " when they determine to go 
upon some Design that will and doth require a con- 
sideration, some six of them get into a Corner and sit 
in Juncto, and if thought fit their business is made 
popular and immediately put in action ; if not, they 
make a full stop to it, and are silently reserv'd." 
On the war-path they paint and adorn their persons, 
first well greased ; their arms, the hatchet and fusil, 
or bow and arrows. Their war parties are small; they 
march out from their fort singing and whooping ; if 
they take prisoners they treat them well, but dress 
them and anoint them so that they may be ready for 
the stake and torture when their captors return home. 
Alsop gives a full account of the process of torture, 
and declares that prisoners are hacked to pieces and 
eaten by the warriors. The religion of the Susque- 
hannas Alsop regarded as an absurd and degrading 
superstition, they being devil-worshipers ; but he ad- 
mits that, "with a kind of wilde imaginary conjecture, 
they suppose from their groundless conceits that the 
World had a Maker." They sacrifice a child to the 
devil every four years, and their medicine men have 
great influence among them. Their dead are buried sit- 
ting, face due west, and all their weapons, etc., around 
them. The houses of the Susquehannas " are low and 
long, built with the bark of trees arch-wise, standing 
thick and confusedly together." The hunters go on 
long winter hunts ; the women are the menials and 
drudges, and yet they are commended for their beauty 
of form, and their husbands are said to be very con- 
stant to them. " Their marriages," says Alsop, in con- 
clusion, " are short and authentique; for after 'tis re- 
solv'd upon by both parties, the Woman sends her 
intended Husband a kettle of boil'd "Venison, or 
Bear, and he returns in lieu thereof Beaver or Otter 
Skins, and so their Nuptial Rites are concluded with- 
out other Ceremony." 

What has been quoted above serves rather to prove 
how difficult it is to extract from contemporary 
writers a clear account of the Indians than to fur- 
nish an illustration of their actual situation and 
character. Nor do we get the satisfactory narratives 
we should expect from observers like Penn and Ga- 
briel Thomas and Thomas Budd, though they must 
have seen the Indians often, face to face, in their 
homes and in the wigwams likewise. It is greatly to 
be regretted that a keen observer and judge of men 
like James Logan did not write the history- of the 



THE INDIANS. 



33 



Delaware Indians, whom he knew so long and so in- 
timately. As it is, the best account of these Indians 
which is to be found anywhere is a fragmentary 
sketch, only a few pages, by Charles Thomson, the 
secretary to the Continental Congress. This brief 
paper, which breaks off in the middle of a sentence, 

is yet sufficient 
to explain to us 
why both whites 
and Indians dig- 
nified Thorn- 
son as the very 
incarnation 
f una- 
ulterated 
truth, and 
adds to 
the re- 
g r e t 
which 
all 
must 
feel 
that 




smaaL 



nent patriot and civilian should have shrunk from 
writing the history of those great events in which 
lie bore so large and yet so nebulous a part. We 
will presently speak further of this paper of 
Thomson's, which has been published among the 
memoirs of the Pennsylvania Historical Society. 
Budd, who arrived in Burlington, N. J., as early as 
T668, and had many opportunities to see and study 
the Indians, said of them, " The Indians told us in a 
conference at Burlington, shortly after we came into 
the country, they were advised to make war on us and 
cut us off while we were but few, for that we sold 
them the smallpox with the match-coats they had 
bought of us, which caused our people to be in fears 
and jealousies concerning them; therefore, we sent 
for the Indian kings to speak with them. . . . One 
3 



of them, in behalf of the rest, made the following 
speech in answer : 

"' Our young men may speak such words as we do not like nor approve 
of, and we cannot help that, and Bome of your young men may speak 
such words as you do not like, and you cannot help that. We are your 
brothers, and intend to live like brothers with you ; we have no miDd to 
have war, for when we have war we lire only skin and bones, the meat 
that we eat doth not do us good; we always are iu fear, we have not the 
benefit of the sun to shine on us, we hide us in holes and corners; we 
are minded to live in peace. If we intend at any time to make war we 
will let you know of it, and the reasons why we make war with you; 
and if yon make us satisfaction for the injury done us, for which the 
war was intended, then we will not make war on you ; and if you intend 
at any time to make war on us, we would have you let us know of it 
and the reason, and then if we do not make satisfaction for the injury 
done unto you, then you may make war on us, otherwise you ought nut 
to do it ; you are our brothers, and we are willing to live like brothers 
with you ; we are willing to have a broad path for you and us to walk 
in, and if an Indian is asleep in this path the Englishman shall pass by 
and do him no harm ; and if an Englishman is asleep in this path, the 
Indian shall pass him by and say, ' He is an Englishman, he is asleep; 
let him alone, he loves to sleep.' " . . . 

Budd adds that 

" The Indians have been very serviceable to us by selling ub venison, 
Indian corn, peas and beans, fish and fowl, buck-skins, beaver, otter, 
and other skins and furs; the men hunt, fish, and fowl, and the women 
plant the corn and carry burthens. There are many of them of a good 
understanding considering their education, and in their publick meet- 
ings of business they have excellent order, one speaking after another, 
and while one is speaking alt the rest keep silent, and do not so much 
as whisper to one another; we had several meetings with them, . . , 
The kings sat on a form, and we on another over against them ; they 
had prepared four belts of wampum (so their current money is called, 
being black and white beads made of a fish-shell) to give us as sealB of 
the covenant they made with us; one of the kings, by the consent and 
appointment of the rest, stood up and spoke." 

William Penn, in his letter to the Free Society of 
Traders, written in 1683, has discoursed copiously 
about the Delaware Indians. It was not until his 
second visit, in 1699, that he became much acquainted 
with other tribes. In a letter of prior date to the one 
just spoken of, written to Henry Savell, from Phila- 
delphia, 30th of Fifth month, 1683, the proprietary 
says, 

" The natives are proper and shapely, very swift, their language lofty 
They speak little, but fervently and with elegancy. I have never seen 
more naturall sagacity, considering them without y° help— I was going 
to say y» spoyle— of tradition. The worst is that they are y° wors for y« 
Christians who have propagated their views and yielded them tradition 
for y« wors & not for y= better things, they believe a Diety and Immor- 
tality without y help of metaphysicks & some of them admirably sober, 
though y« Dutch & Sweed and English have by Brandy and Rum almo-t 
Debaucht y-» all and when Drank ye most wretched of spectacles, often 
burning & sometimes murdering one another, at which times y» Chris- 
tians are not without danger as well as fear. Tho' for gain they will run 
the hazard both of y' and y Law, they make their worshipp to consist 
of two parts, sacrifices w<> they offer of their first fruits with marvellous 
fervency and labour of holy sweating as if in a bath, the other is their 
Canticoes, as they call them, w°>> is performed by round Dances, sonic- 
times words, then songs, then shouts, two being in ye midle y't begin 
and direct y chorus ; this they performe with equal ferve.icy but great 
appearances of joy.i In this I admire them, nobody shall want w< an- 



» Penn appears particularly anxious to show here and in his letter to 
the Society of Free Traders that the songs (or Canticoes.as he calls them) 
and dances of the Indians, which he enjoyed heartily, were purely reli- 
gious in their character,— actB of exalted spiritual fervor. In fact ha 



34 



HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA. 



other has, yett they have propriety (property)but freely communicable, 
they want or care for little, no Bills of Exchange nor Bills of Lading, 
no Chancery suits nor Exchequer Acct. have they to perplex themselves 
with, they are soon satisfied, and their pleasure feeds them, — I mean 
bunting and fishing." 1 

This letter is made much more full in the one to 
the Free Society of Traders, written in August of the 
same year. The natives, Penn says, are generally 
tall, straight in their person, — 

" well built, and of singular proportion [i.e., of symmetry]; they tread 
strong and clever, and mostly walk with alofty chin. 2 Of complexion 
black, but by design, as the gipsies in England. They grease them- 
selves with bear's fat clarified, and using no defence against sun and 
weather, their skins must needs be swarthy. Their eye is livid and 
black, not unlike a straight- looked Jew. The thick lips and fiat nose, 
so frequent with the East Indians and blacks, are not common to them; 
fori have seen as comely European-like faces among them, of both sexes, 
as on your side the eea ; and truly an Italian complexion hath not more 
of the white ; and the tioses of several of them have as much of the 
Roman. Their language is lofty, yet narrow ; but, like the Hebrew, in 
signification full. Like short-hand in writing, one word serveth in the 
place of three, and the rest are supplied by the understanding of the 
hearer; imperfect in their tenses, wanting in their moods, participles, 
adverbs, conjunctions, and interjections. I have made it my business to 
understand it, that I might not want an interpreter on any occasion; 
and I must Bay that I know not a language spoken in Europe that hath 
words of more sweetness or greatness, in accent and emphasis, than 
theirs ; for instance, Octockekon, Rancocas, Oricton, Shak, Marian, Fo- 
quesian, all which are names of places, and have grandeur in them. Of 
words of sweetness, anna is mother ; issimus, a brother ; neteap, friend ; 
usqueoret, very good ; pane, bread ; metsa, eat ; maltu, no ; haita, to have ; 
payo, to come; Sepassen, Passijon, the names of places ; Tamane,Secane, 
Menanse, Secatareus, are the names of persons. If one ask them for 
anything they have not, they will answer, matta ne hatla, which, to 
translate, is ' not I have,' instead of * I have not.' 

" Of their customs and manners there is mucli to be said. I will begin 
with children. So soon as they are born they wash them in water, and 
while very young and in cold weather to choose, they plunge them in 
the rivers to harden and embolden them. Having wrapt them in a 
clout, they lay them on a strait thin board a little more than the length 
and breadth of the child, and swaddle it fast upon the board to make it 
straight; wherefore all Indians have flat heads; and thus they carry 
them at their backs. The children will go [walk] very young, at nine 
months commonly. They wear only a small clout around their waist 



was on record as opposing ordinary song and dance, saying of dancing, 
in the words of one of the ancients, " As many paces as a man maketh 
in dancing, so many prices doth he make to go to hell." (" No Cross, no 
Crown," 16G9, p. 86.) The Indians may have sung and danced at their 
religious services (if they had any), but unfortunately they sung and 
danced likewise after all their feasts, and especially when they had had 
one of their orgies, aud the rum and cider were masters of the savages' 
ordinary decorum and stoical 6elf-containment. 

i Penn. Archives, vol. i. pp. G8-9. 

2 Penn had noticed a singularity in the Indians' gait, yet did not detect 
what it was ; yet it is f>o obvious that a few years back, in Kentucky, 
where the people still walk like the Indians, even a school -boy would 
recognize a person from the East by differences in his way of walking 
from the way of those to the manner born. The Indian Bteps with a 
perfectly straight foot and without turning his toes out, so that if the 
sun were upon his back the shadow of his shanks would entirely cover 
his feet. This tread is the antithesis of that of the Bailor, who walks 
with his toes very much turned out, and the European and the Eastern 
man walk like him. In both cases convenience and propriety are suited: 
the sailor, by his mode of locomotion, is enabled to tread more firmly and 
safely upon an uncertain deck that is always uneasy ; the Indian, by 
bis mode, is able to walk more safely the narrow forest path, and to step 
also with greater stealth and softness in pursuit of bis enemy and his 
game where leaves to rustle and twigs to break are numerous. But the 
difference is that the sailor "rolls" in his gait and his shoulders swing 
from side to side, while the Indian's walk makes him carry himself sin- 
gularly straight, his shoulders never diverging from a perpendicular. 
This little circumstance added materially to the outward appearance of 
gravity in the savage's general demeanor. 



till they are big. If boys, they go a-fishing till ripe for the woods, 
which is about fifteen. There they hunt; and having given some proofs 
of their manhood by a good return of skins, they marry ; else it is a 
shame to think of a wife. The girls stay with their mothers, and help 
to hoe the ground, plant corn, and carry burthens ; and they do well to 
use them to that, while young, which they must do when they are old; 
for the wives are the true servants of the husbands; otherwise the men 
are very affectionate to them. When the young women are fit for mar- 
riage they wear something upon their heads for an advertisement, but 
so as their faces are hardly to be seen but when they please. The age 
they marry at, if women, is- about thirteen and fourteen; if men, seven- 
teen and eighteen. They are rarely older. Their houses are mats or 
barks of trees, set on poles in the fashion of an English barn, but out of 
the power of the winds, for they are hardly higher than a man. They 
lie on reeds or grass. In travel they lodge in the woods about a great 
fire, with the mantle of duffils they wear by day m rapt about them and 
a few boughs stuck round them. Their diet is maize or Indian corn 
divers ways prepared, sometimes roasted in the ashes, sometimes beaten 
and boiled with water, which they call homine. They also make cakes 
not unpleasant to eat. They have likewise several sorts of beans and 
peas that are good nourishment, and the woods and rivers are their 
larder. If an European comes to see them, or calls for lodging at their 
house or wigwam, thoy give him the best place and first cut. If they 
come to visit ns they salute us with an Itah ! which is as much as to say, 
'Good be to you!' and set them down, which is mostly on the ground, 
close to their heels, their legs upright ;it may he they speak not a word, 
but observe all passages [all that passes]. If you give them anything to 
eat or drink, well, for they will not ask ; and, be it little or much, if it 
be with kinduess, they are well pleased ; else they go away sullen, but 
say nothing. They are great concealers of their own resentments, 
brought to it, I believe, by the revenge that hath been practiced among 
them. In either of these they are not exceeded by the Italians. A 
tragical instance fell out since I came into the country. A king's 
daughter, thinking herself slighted by her husband in suffering an- 
other woman to lie down between them, rose up, went out, plucked a 
root out of the ground, and ate it, upon which she immediately died; 
and for which, last week, he made an offering to her kindred for atone- 
ment and liberty of marriage, as two others did to the kindred of their 
wives, who died a natural death ; for till widowers have done so they 
must not marry again. Some of the young women are said to take 
undne liberty before marriage for a portion; but when married, chaste. 
When with child they know their husbands no more till delivered ; and 
during their month they touch no meat, they eat but with a stick, lest 
they should defile it; nor do their husbandB frequent them till that time 
be expired. 

"But in liberality they excel; nothing is too good for their friend; 
give them a fine gun, coat, or other thing, it may pass through twenty 
hands before it sticks; light of heart, strong affections, but soon spent. 
The most merry creatures that live, feast and dance perpetually ; they 
never have much, nor want much ; wealth circulateth like the blood; 
all parts partake; and though none shall want what another hath, yet 
exact observers of property. Some kings have sold, others presented 
me with several parcels of land ; the pay or presents I made them wore 
not hoarded by the particular owners ; but the neighboring kings aud 
their clans being present when the goods were brought out, the parties 
chiefly concerned consulted what and to whom they should give them. 
To every king then, by the hands of a person for that work appointed, 
is a proportion sent, bo sorted and folded, and with that gravity that is 
admirable. Then that king subdivideth it in like manner among his 
dependants, they hardly leaving themselves an equal share with one of 
their subjects ; and be it on such occasions as festivals, or at their com- 
mon meals, the kings distribute, and to themselves last. They care fol- 
licle, because they want but little; aud the reason is, a little contents 
them. In this they are sufficiently revenged on us; if they are ignorant 
of our pleasures, they are also free from our pains. . . . Since the Euro- 
peans came into these parts they are grown great lovers of strong liquor^, 
rum especially, and for it they exchange the richest of their skins and 
furs If they are heated with liquors they are restless till they have 
enough to Bleep, — that is their cry, Some more and I will go to sleep ; but 
when drunk one of the most wretched spectacles in the world! 

"In sickness, impatient to be cured ; and for it give anything, espec- 
ially for their children, to whom they are extremely natural. They 
drink at these times a tisan, or decoction of some roots in spring-water; 
aud if they eat any flesh it must be of the female of any creature. If 
they die they bury them with their apparel, be they man or woman, and 
the nearest of kin fiiug in something precious with them as a token of 
their love. Their mourning is blacking of their faces, which they con- 



THE INDIANS. 



35 



tinue for a year. They are choice of the graves of their dead, for, leBt 
they should be lost by time and fall to common use, they pick off the 
grass that grows upon them, and heap up the fallen earth with great care 
and exactness. These poor people are under a dark night in things re- 
lating to religion ; to be sure the tradition of it ; yet they believe a God 
and immortality without the help of metaphysics, for they say, ' There 
is a Great King that made them, who dwells in a glorious country to the 
southward of them, and that the souls of the good shall go thither where 
they shall live again.' Their worship consists of two parts, sacrifice and 
cantico. Their sacrifice is their first fruits; the first and fattest buck 
they kill goeth to the fire, where he is all burnt, with a mournful ditty 
■of him that performeth the ceremony, but with such marvellous fer- 
vency and labor of body that he will even sweat to a foam. The other 
part is their cantico, performed by round dances, sometimes words, some- 
times songs, then shouts, two being in the middle that begin, and by 
singing and drumming on a board direct the chorus. Their postures in 
i ho dance are very antick and differing, but all keep measure. This is 
dune with equal earnestness and labor, but great appearance of joy. In 
ihe fall, when the corn cometh in, they begin to feast one another. 
There have been two great festivals already, to which all come that will. 
I was at one myself; their entertainment was a great seat by a spring 
under some shady trees, and twenty bucks, with hot cakes of new corn, 
both wheat and beans, which they make up in a square form in the leaves 
of the stem and bake them in the ashes, and after that they fall to dance. 
But they that go must carry a small present in their money ; it may be 
sixpence, which is made of the bone of a fish ; the black is with them 
as gold, the white silver ; they call it all wampum. 

" Their government is by Kings, which they call Sachama, and these 
by succession, but always on the mother's side. For instance, the chil- 
dren of him who is now king will not succeed, but his brother by the 
mother, or the children of his sister, whose sons (and after them the chil- 
dren of her daughters) will reign, for woman inherits. The reason they 
render for this way of descent is, that their issue may not bo spurious. 
Every King hath his Council, and that consists of all the old and wise 
men of his nation, which, perhaps, is two hundred people. Nothing of 
moment is undertaken, be it war, peace, selling of land, or traffick, with- 
out advising with them, and, which is more, with the young men too. 
It is admirable to consider how powerful the Kings are, and yet how 
they move by the breath of their people. I have had occasion to be in 
council with them upon treaties of land, and to adjust the terms of trade. 
Their order is thus: The king sits in the middle of an half moon, and 
hath his council, the old and wise, on each hand ; behind them, or at a 
little distance, sit tho younger fry in the same figure. Having consulted 
and resolved their business, the King ordered one of them to speak to 
me; he stood up, came to me, and, in the name of his King, saluted me; 
then took me by the hand and told me, ' He was ordered by his King to 
speak to me, and that now it was not he, but the King that spoke; be- 
cause what he should say was the King's mind. 1 He first prayed me ' to 
excuse them, that they had not complied with me the last time, he feared 
there might be some fault in the Interpreter, being neither Indian nor 
English; besides, it was the Indian custom to deliberate and take up 
much time in council before they resolve, and that if the young people 
and owners of the laud had been as ready as he, I had not met with so 
much delay.' Having thus introduced his matter, he fell to the bounds 
of the land they had agreed to dispose of and the price, which now is 
little and dear, that which would have bought twenty miles not buying 
now two. During the time that this man spoke not a man of them was 
observed to whisper or smile, the old grave, the young reverent in their 
deportment. They speak littl e but fervently, and with elegance. I have 
never seen more natural sagacity, considering them without the help (I 
was going to say the spoil) of tradition, and he will deserve the name of 
wise that outwits them in any treaty about a thing they understand. 
"When the purchase was agreed great promises passed between us, ' of 
kindness and good neighborhood, and that the Indians and English must 
live in love as long as the sun gave light,' which done, another made a 
speech to the Indians in the name of all the Sachemakers or Kings, first 
to tell them what was done, next to charge and command them ' to love 
the Christians, and particularly live in peace with me and the people 
under my government ; that many governors had been in the river, but 
that no Governor had come himself to live and stay here before, and hav- 
ing now such an one, that had treated them well, they should never do 
him or his any wrong, 1 at every sentence of which they shouted and said 
Amen in their way. The justice they have is pecuniary. In case of any 
wrong or evil fact, be it murder itself, they atone by feasts and presents 
of their wampum, which is proportioned to the quality of the offence, or 
the person injured, or of the sex they are of. For in case they kill a 
woman they pay double, and the reason they render is, ' that 6he breedeth 



children, which men cannot do.' It is rare they fall out if sober, and if 
drunk they forgive it, saying, ' It was the drink, and not the man, that 
abused them.' 

" We have agreed that in all differences between us six of each side 
shall end the matter. Do not abuse them, but let them have justice and 
you win them. The worst is that they are the worse for the Christians, 
who have propagated their vices and yielded their traditions for ill and 
not for good things. But as low an ebb as these people are at, and as in- 
glorious as their own condition looks, the Christians have not outlived 
their sight, with all their pretensions to an higher manifestation. What 
good, then, might not a good people graft where there is so distinct a 
knowledge left between good and evil? I beseech God to incline the 
hearts of all that come into these parts, to outlive the knowledge of the 
natives, by a fixed obedience to their greater knowledge of the will of 
God, for it were miserable indeed for us to fall under the just censure of 
the poor Indians' conscience, while we make profession of things so far 
transcending. 

1 For their original, I am ready to believe them of the Jewish race; I 
mean, of the stock of the ten tribes, and that fur the following reasons: 
First, they were to go to a 'land not planted nor known'; which, to be 
sure, Asia and Africa were, if not Europe, and He that intended that ex- 
traordinary judgment upon them might make the passage not uneasy to 
them, as it is not impossible in itself, from the easternmost parts of Asia 
to the westernmost of America. In the next place, I find them of the 
like countenance, and theirchildren of so lively resemblance that a man 
would think himself in Duke's Place, or Berry Street, in London, when 
he Beeth them. But this is not all : they agree in rites; they reckon by 
moons ; they offer their first fruits ; they have a kind of feast of taber- 
nacles; they are said to lay their altar upon twelve stones ; their mourn- 
ing a year ; customs of women, with many other things that do not now 
occur." 

So much wrote Penn concerning the aborigines of 
his province. Gabriel Thomas says (not repeating 
those matters in which Penn and he write identically) 
that 

' When they bury their Dead, they put into the Ground with them 
some House-Utensils and some Money (as Tokens of their Love and Af- 
fection) with other Things, expecting they shall have Occasion for them 
again in the other World. And if a Person of Note dies very far from 
the Place of hiB own Residence they will carry hisBones home some con- 
siderable time after to be buried there. They are also very curious, nay, 
even nice, in preserving and repairing the Graves of their Dead. They 
do not love to be asked twice their Judgment about one Thing. They 
are a People who generally delight much in Mirth, and are very studi- 
ous in observing the Vertues of Hoots and Herbs, by which they cure 
themselves of many Distempers in their Bodies, both internal or exter- 
nal. They will not suffer their Beards to grow, for they will pluck the 
Hair off with their own fingers as soon as they can get hold of it, hold- 
ing it a great Deformity to have a Beard. . . Their chief Imploymeut 
is in Hunting, Fishing, and Fowling, and making Canoes, or Indian 
Boats and Bowls, in all which Arts they are very dexterous and ingeni- 
ous. Their Women's Business chiefly consists in planting of Indian 
Corn and pounding it to Meal in Mortars, with Pestile (as we beat our 
Spice), and make Bread, and draw their "Victuals, which they perform 
very neatly and cleanlily. They also make Indian Mats, Ropes, Hats, 
and Baskets (some of curious Workmanship) of fheirHemp, which there 
grows wild and natural in the Woods in Great Plenty, In short the 
Women are very ingenious in their several Imployments as well as the 
Men. Their young Maids are naturally very modest and shamefae'd. 
And their young Women when newly married are very nice and shy, 
and will not suffer the men to talk of any immodest or lascivious Mat- 
ters. Their Houses are, for the most part, cover'd with Chestnut Bark, 
but very close and warm, insomuch that no Rain can go through. Their 
Age in Computation may be compared with the Christians. Their wear- 
ing Habit is commonly Deer-Skins or Duffles. They don't allow of men- 
tioning the Name of any Friend after his Death, for at his Decease, they 
make their Face black all over with black Lead, and when their Affairs 
go well with them they paint theirFaces with red Lead, it being a Token 
of their Joy, as the other is of their Grief. They are great Observers of 
the Weather by the Moon. They take great Delight in Cloths of vari- 
ous Colours. And are bo punctual that if any go from their first Offer or 
Bargain with them, it will be very difficult for that Party to get any 
Dealings with them any more, or to have any further Converse with 
them, and moreover, it is worthy of Remark, that when a company of 
them are got together they never interrupt or contradict one another, 



36 



HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA. 



'till two of them have made an end of their Discourse, for if uever so 
many be in Company only two must discourse at a time, and the rest 
must keep Silence. The English and they live together very peace- 
ably, by reason that the English satisfies them for their Land. . . . The 
Dutch and Sweads inform me that they are greatly decreased in num- 
ber to what they were when they came first into this country, and the 
Indians themselves say that two of them die to every one Christian that 
comes in here." * 

To show what the early settlers of America thought 
about the Indians is a very different thing from show- 
ing what they really were. Observers were not trained 
in those days to report things as they are. They went 
to their work with settled prejudices, preconceived 
opinions, predilections, and that obstinate half-knowl- 
edge which is in so many cases worse than no knowl- 
edge at all. They would not look at the Indians ex- 
cept as they conformed to or differed from European 
standards and European social systems, and the narrow 
theories of the day, upon all matters connected especi- 
ally with ethnology, absolutely prevented them from 
forming just opinions, even in respect to what they 
clearly saw. Hence a thousand wild and ridiculous 
speculations and dreams, mixed up with very little 
plain fact. Our early writers gave us, so to speak, 
all the alchemy and astrology of Indian history, while 
neglecting its plain chemical analysis, and the simple 
but comprehensive mathematical laws, by which its 
vital system could be intelligently explained. We 
are told much of Indian kings and emperors, of coun- 
cil fires, peace-pipes, and wampum belts, but almost 
nothing of the Indian social system and domestic 
economy, and practically less than nothing in regard 
to Indian languages, since nearly all there is said upon 
that necessary factor in ethnological study is false and 
illusory. The hardest task which students of Ameri- 
can antiquities to-day have to encounter is that of 
rescuing hard solid facts from the mass of opinion 
and speculation in which they are hidden and buried. 
The day for these theories is not yet quite passed 
away, as Prof. W. D. Whitney has observed in his 
lectures on i( Language and the Study of Language :" 
" When men sit down with minds crammed with scat- 
tering items of historical information, abounding 
prejudices, and teeming fancies to the solution of 
questions respecting whose conditions they know 
nothing, there is no folly which they are not prepared 
to commit." But still men are content to speculate 
far less absurdly to-day than they did a century 
and more ago on this subject. We have just seen 
how gravely and calmly Peun put forward his hy- 
pothesis that the Delawares are descendants of the 
ten tribes of Israel ; but scholars who have much 
more pretentiously devoted themselves to American 
antiquities have not rested with the ten tribes. The 
Indians have been derived successively from nearly 
every civilized country of the Old World ; Wales, 

1 Gabriel Thomas. "Historical Description of the Province and 
Country of West New Jeisey in America. London, 1G98." In hiB His- 
tory of Pennsylvania, Thomas simply repeats what Penn had to nay 
about the Indians. 



Ireland, Scandinavia, Spain, Egypt, Phoenicia, India, 
and China have been called upon in turn to make 
themselves responsible for the institutions and the 
monuments of our American aborigines, and China 
and Mongolia are still favorites in this matter with 
the most serious and best instructed historians. 2 



" Bancroft, in his first edition, permits himself enough dalliance with 
the hypothesis of a Calmuck or Mongolian immigration as tu attempt 
to show that it was not impossible, perhaps not improbable. Grotius, 
De Laet, etc., speculated with less information perhaps than our his- 
torian, and with more prejudices, but not more widely from the purpose. 
Seme writers have assumed that the Phoenicians and Carthaginians, be- 
cause they made adventurous voyages and passed outside the Straits of 
Hercules, must have come to America. Plato's myth of the Atlautides 
has been made to do service in buoying up a sunken continent out of 
the oozy depths of the ocean and the mermaiden grottoes of fantastic 
legend. Mexico and Peru, as has been infallibly shown time and again, 
must have got their monuments from Egypt or from India, — Curnac r 
Luxor, Elepbanta are reproduced at Palenque and Uxmal, at Cholula 
and Cuzco. Aristotle is quoted to show that the ancients must have 
had a knowledge of and intercourse with America. Slight similarities 
of costume, face, and habits have been seized upon as eagerly as Penn 
seized upon the fact that the Indians counted time by moons (as if Penn 
bimself did not do the same thing!) to establish relationship for our 
barbarians with the children of Israel, with the fugitive Cauaauites r 
etc. The sons of Prince Madoc of course have not been neglected. 
White Indians in North Carolina spoke the purest sort of a Cymric dia- 
lect, and some of tlieShawaueseare reported to have been seen currying 
around Welsh Billies in the same belt along with their tomahawks and 
scalping-knives. Mcnassah Ben Israel concludes, upon the same sort 
of data as those which convinced Penn, that the lost tribes emerged be- 
tween California and the Mississippi, but Spizelius and those who fol- 
lowed him in the last century were content to ascribe the origin of our 
Indians to a country less distant than the Levant. China, Tartary, Si- 
beria, and Kamtschatka, with the Aleutian archipelago, afforded a 
natural route for immigration, though no attempt is made to explain 
how the hordes of savages were able to make their way through the 
frozen wastes of Alaska and British America. The fact that Leif, son 
of the Northman, Eric the Red, did discover America in the year 1000 
A.n. has made work fur the pseudo-ethnologists as well as the poets in 
the scratchings on the Digbton rocksin Massachusetts, and the old mill 
lit Newport, R. I., and has even led to the factitious discovery of suit- 
posed inscriptions upon the face of the masses of Seneca sandstone at 
the falls of the Potomac. The Norsemen themselves encouraged the 
belief tbat on the Atlautic coast, between Virginia and Florida, a white 
nation existed, who clothed themselves in long, snowy robes, carried 
banners on lofty poles, and chanted songs and bymus. These were sup- 
posed to be the Irish immigrants, who replied in pure Gaelic when 
Raleigh's seamen accosted them, and spared Owen Chapelain's life in 
16G9 because he spoke to them i n Weleh. Alexander v*n Humboldt had 
condescended to listen to some of these fables, and to repeat them in his. 
Cosmos. The Chinese or Japanese settlement of our continent, by 
vessels coming over the Pacific Ocean, has found many advocates. Span- 
ish legendB are adduced to confirm this view. M. do Guignes, in a 
memoir read before the French Academy of Inscriptions, contends that 
the Chinese penetrated to America a.j>. 45S, and adduces the description 
and chartof Fon Sangin proof. In ourown daythat ripe Philadelphia 
scholar, Charles G. Lelaud, has republished the Btory of the so-called 
island of Fou-Sang aud its inhabitants Do Guignes holds that the 
Chinese were familiar with the Straits of Magellan, and that the Coreans 
had a settlement on Terra del Fuego. Another Chinese immigration is 
assigned to a.d. 1270, the time of the Tartar invasion of the " Central 
Flowery Kingdom.' 1 But there are other speculations still on this sub- 
ject Thomas Morton, in his" New Canaan 1 ' (a.d. 1637), argues for the 
Latin origin of the Indians, because he heard thi'm use Latin words, 
and make allusions to the god Pan. "Williamson thinks that the race 
unquestionably springs from a Hindoo or a Cingalese source. Thorow- 
good, Adair, aud Boudinot agree with Penn and Rabbi ben Menasaah. 
Roger Williams also said, "Some taste of affinity with the Hebrew I 
have found." Cotton Mather thought that "probably the Devil, Beduciug 
the first inhabitants of America into it, therein aimed at the having of 
them and their posterity out of the sound of the silver trumpets of the 
gospol, then to be heard throughout the Roman empire. If the Devil 



THE INDIANS. 



37 



The study of our antiquities is certainly engirt with 
tremendous difficulties, and these are especially promi- 
nent when we approach the linguistic side of our eth- 
nology. All the conditions of the problem of our 
native languages are perplexing. "The number, va- 
riety, and changeableness of the different tongues is 
wonderful." Each family almost constitutes a tribe; 
each tribe has its dialect ; each dialect changes from 
year to year, so that the speech of this generation is 
barely intelligible to the next. Warfare was the 
normal state of the Indian, and the perpetual strife 
of petty tribes is thought to have been gradually ex- 
tinguishing American civilization for many years; the 
culture of Mexico was yielding to the influence of 
barbarism, just as the mound-builders of our Missis- 
sippi Valley were extinguished before a later and 
more savage race. Climate and mode of life have 
also contributed to accelerate the differentiation of 
our American dialects, which are mobile and change- 
able intrinsically to a remarkable degree. We have 
studied these dialects only indifferently well and 



iiad any expectation that by the peopling of America he should utterly 
deprive any Europeans of the two benefits, literature and religion, which 
dawned upon the miserable world (one just before, the other just after 
the first famed navigation hither), 'tie to be hoped he will be disap- 
pointed of that expectation." As for the source of the Indians Mather 
fancied them Scythians, because they answered Julius Caesar's descrip- 
tion of " dijjicilms invenire quam interjicere" But the fact of idle and 
comical opinions on this Bubject does not destroy the interest in these 
speculations, nor the utility of continuing our investigations, on a 
rational basis, into American archaeology. Humboldt has said, partly 
in apology and partly in a spirit of protest, that " I do not participate 
in the rejecting spirit which has but too often thrown popular traditions 
into obscurity, but I am, on the contrary, firmly persuaded that by 
greater diligence and perseverance many of the historical problems 
which relate to the maritime expeditions of the Middle Ages, to the 
striking identity in religious traditions, manner of dividing time, and 
works of art in America and Eastern Asia, to the migrations of the 
Mexican nations, to the ancient centres of dawning civilization in 
Aztlan, Quivira, and Upper Louisiana, as well as in the elevated plateaux 
of Cundinamarca and Peru, will one day be cleared up by discoveries of 
facts with which wehave hitherto been entirely unacquainted." (Cosmos, 
to], ii., 610, note.) Professor Whitney is less sanguine. " The linguistic 
■condition of America," he says, " and the state of our knowledge re- 
specting it being such as we have Been, it is evident how futile must be 
at present any attempt to prove by the evidence of language the peopling 
of the continent from Asia, or from any other part of the world outside. 
. . . What we have to do at present is simply to learn all that we can 
of the Indian languages themselves, to settle their internal relations, 
elicit their laws of growth, reconstruct their older forme, and ascend 
toward their original condition ae far as the material within our reach 
and the state in which it is presented will allow ; if our studies shall at 
length put us in a position to deal with the question of their Asiatic 
derivation, we will rejoice at it. I do not myself expect that valuable 
light will ever be shed upon the subject by linguistic evidence ; others 
may be more sanguine, but all must at any rate agree that ns things are 
the subject is in no position to be taken up and discussed with profit." 
Nevertheless, Professor Whitney insists that greater diligence should be 
devoted to the study of our antiquities. " Our national duty and honor," 
he contends, "are peculiarly concerned in this matter of the study of 
aboriginal American languages as the most fertile and important branch 
of American archaeology. Europeans accuse us, with too much reason, 
of indifference and inefficiency with regard to preserving memorials of 
the races whom we have dispossessed and are dispossessing, and to pro- 
moting a thorough comprehension of their history. Indian scholars and 
associations which devote themselves to gathering together and making 
public linguistic anil other archaeological materials for construction of 
the proper ethnology of the continent are far mrer than they should he 
among ue." 



during a brief period ; they have no literature, their 
traditions are scanty and ill-preserved ; the tribes 
themselves in many instances have wasted away from 
war, pestilence, famine, and the blighting shadow of 
the white man. These things make the search for 
the elements and radical character of our American 
dialects a difficult and arduous undertaking, and it is 
no wonder, the circumstances being such, that the 
ancient history of the continent is buried in the 
deepest obscurity. But we know that the continent 
had a history. 

" Indicia of a numerous and civilized population, 
over whose memories and labors unnumbered ages 
have rolled, are yet discoverable on the shores of our 
ocean lakes, on the banks of our mighty rivers, and 
in the depths of our impenetrable forests. But these 
teach us no more of the ancient inhabitants than is 
known of the most aged of mortals, — that they were, 
and are not. We are doomed, perhaps, to be forever 
ignorant of the origin and progress of that race which 
preceded the inhabitants found upon our coasts at the 
first visits of Columbus and his successors, who are 
supposed not only to have adorned our country with 
the works of science and art, but to have conquered 
and enlightened a large portion of those climes which 
ignorance and pride have denominated the Old 
World." 1 

Gordon here refers to the theory of Thomas Jefferson, 
which many others have coquetted with, that America, 
being the oldest hemisphere, might also have been the 
home of the elder races of men. The theory, what- 
ever its merits may be in other respects, ought to be 
useful in the way of "retort courteous" to those who 
insist that our continent has been peopled from else- 
where. There is no necessity within the domains of 
strict science for believing that our Indians are not 
autochthones, — spruug from the soil itself. Voltaire 
has suggested that we should be no more astonished 
that the discoverers found men in America than that 
they found flies. But if the hypothesis of migration 
be insisted upon, America is as good a place to migrate 
from as to migrate to. Franklin, upon this point, seems 
to have coincided with Jefferson. Hector St. John 
Crevecceur, 2 in his account of Franklin, represents 
"Poor Richard," in the course of some comments 
upon the works of the mound-builders, as saying, 
"This planet is very old. Like the works of Homer 
and Hesiod, who can say through how many editions 
it has passed in the immensity of ages?" And the 
philosopher throws out the suggestion, without advo- 
cating it, that the mound-builders may have been 
swept away by some cataclysm of nature in prehis- 
toric time. " The rent continent, the straits, the gulfs, 
the islands, the shallows of the ocean, are but vast 
fragments, on which, as on the planks of some wrecked 
vessel, the men of former generations who have es- 



1 Gordon's History of Pennsylvania, Chap. I. 

- " Voyage dans la Haute Penusylvanie," Chap. II. 



38 



HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA. 



caped these commotions have produced new popula- 
tions. Time, so precious to us, the creatures of a 
moment, is nothing to nature." And the obverse of 
the shield can be presented to those who insist upon 
the Old World as the mother of our people with no 
little effect. Geologically, the continental mass of 
North America is far older than that of the other 
hemisphere. In the western part of this country, in 
California, Arizona, New Mexico, there are evidences, 
such as we find in the Syrian deserts, the plains of 
Mesopotamia, the Campagna of Rome, and the sandy 
wastes of Chinese Turkestan, of a country worn out 
and wasted by man's occupancy. The deep canons 
and sun-baked valleys of Arizona once teemed with 
populations like Palmyra and Babylon and Nineveh. 
The Basque tongue in Europe is thought to be the 
oldest now spoken, if not the very language of the 
primitive race. It is older than the ancient Aryan 
speech, than the oldest Turanian tongue, and it has 
more affinities with the American dialects than any 
other which is known. These affinities are not devel- 
oped or understood enough to warrant the building 
of any conclusions upon them. But as far as they 
have been studied they do nothing to negative the 
hypothesis that the Indian race is the surviving rem- 
nant of an older civilization which once peopled this 
continent with men and adorned it with monuments. 
Some of these monuments in the Mississippi Valley 
are so old that they belong to older geological forma- 
tions. The epochs of glacier and drift have cast their 
debris upon the foot of these mounds, which must 
have been standing when down from the north, over 
mountain, lake, and river, with resistless might, the 
vitreous mass of the great glacier stream moved slowly 
southward. Why may not Algonkin and Iroquois 
have been survivors, like these mounds, from the 
elder civilization which built them? 

When we descend to historic times, when we come 
to understand the Indian as he has been since the 
white man first visited these shores, we find one 
single race of men occupying practically the entire 
continent, excepting the Esquimaux of. the far North, 
with whom we have no concern. This race, so far as 
the section of country we speak of is in debate, pos- 
sessed a belt extending certainly from the Mississippi 
River to the Atlantic Ocean, and from some point, 
not exactly defined, north of the St. Lawrence River 
to North Carolina Sounds on the east, and the Ken- 
tucky cane-brakes on the west. It is probable that, 
as science progresses, it will be discovered that the 
one common race need not be divided into more than 
four or five nations, and that the subdivision of these 
nations into tribes and bands which now exists 
serves no ethnological purpose. Within the limits 
of the United States east of the Mississippi River, 
south of Hudson's Bay, and north of Georgia, only 
two nations need to be considered in historic times. 
One of these is the Delaware, Lenape, or, to speak 
more generally, the Algonkin nation ; the other is 



the Iroquois nation. Each of these nations was rep- 
resented upon the soil of Pennsylvania, and on the 
site or in the vicinity of Philadelphia. The re- 
searches of John Gilmary Shea, Francis Parkman, 
and others who have given a special and intelligent 
attention to the subject, have established the fact 
that the tribe called Minquas or Minquosy by the 
Dutch (in the Latin of De Laet, Machoeretini) , Meng- 
wes by the Swedes (the English corruption of which 
was Mingoes), Susquehannocks or Susquehannoughs 
(Sasquesahannogh is the rendering by Capt. John 
Smith) by the Marylanders,*and Andastes or Gan- 
dastogues (corrupted in Pennsylvania into Conesto- 
gas) was a branch of the Iroquois nation, settled 
above tide on the Susquehanna and Potomac Rivers. 
This ambitious race of savages, inspired with a con- 
quering instinct which put them on a par with the 
ancient Romans, not only consolidated its strength 
at home by a political and military confederacy, but 
extended its power and influence abroad by the estab- 
lishment of military colonies, just as republican Rome 
was in the habit of doing. One of these colonies con- 
stituted the tribe of the Tuscaroras, occupying part 
of North Carolina and Georgia, upon the flanks of 
the Cherokee nation. Another was the Nottaways, 
south of the James River, in Virginia. A third col- 
ony was the tribe of the Nanticokes, afterwards (in 
Pennsylvania) known as the Conoys, who held the 
Delaware and Eastern Shore of Maryland peninsula 
from the Brandywine southward. They were joined 
on the north by the Minquas or Susquehannas, whose 
" fort" was on the Susquehanna River at or near the 
mouth of Conestoga Creek. The Huron Iroquois of 
Canada were of this same nation, which thus occu- 
pied a belt of territory from north to south extend- 
ing from Lake Simcoe to the southern limits of North 
Carolina, all in the country of the Algonkins, yet as 
distinctly separate from them by difference of language, 
character, and habit as a vein of trap rock in a body 
of gneiss or granite. The Andastes (to call them by 
their own tribal name, Andasta meaning a cabin-pole, 
and the tribe wishing to imply by it that they were 
house-builders rather than dwellers in lodges), like 
the Lenapes, claimed a Western origin, and they were 
the most warlike race upon the continent, proud and 
haughty as the Romans whom they so closely resem- 
bled, and, like them, enabled to conquer by their com- 
pact military and civil organization. Other tribes 
were split into small bands, between which there 
was only a feeble and defective concert and unity of 
action. The Iroquois, on the other hand, were a na- 
tion, and wherever we find them we discover that 
they lived and acted together in co-operative union. 
In Pennsylvania, for example, in all the land pur- 
chases made by Dutch, Swedes, and English, we find 
the Minquas acting as one tribe, dealing as one peo- 
ple and one name, whereas with the Lenapes each 
petty chief seemed to do what was best in his own 
sight. Tamine or Tamanend was probably the great 



AUTOGRAPHS OF DELAWARE INDIANS. 



39 



chief of the Lenapes in the time of Penn, and his su- 
preme authority was manifest in the councils, but 
when it came to selling land he was no more than 
on a level with the twenty or thirty sachems who 
signed their marks to the deeds of conveyance for 
the various tracts. The Minquas ruled all the tribes 
adjacent to them and received tribute from them. 
Before the confederacy of the Five Nations entered 




KowyorkknJcox. 
July 15, 1682. 



£ 




Allowkam. 
July 15, 1682. 




Tamanen. 
June 23, 16S3. 

Tamanen. 
June 23, 1683. 

JS 

Tamanen {Receipt for Money). 
June 23, 1683. 

) 

Neneshikken. 
hth Mo. 14, 1683- 



Malebone. 
bth Mo. 14, 1683. 



* 

Secane. 
hth Mo. 14, 1683. 

JV 

Icquoquehan. 
hth Mo. 14, 1683. 

C C 

Ewepenaike. 
June 23, 1683. 

Okettarickon. 
June 23, 1683. 



Wingebone. 
June 25, 1683. 



X 

vanpet 

e 23, 1 



Swanpees. 
June 23, 1683. 



Wt.Bnapof.tU 
June 23, 1683. 



Kehelappan. 
June 23, 1683. 



Pendanoughah Neahannock. 
6th Mo. 14, 1683. 

Reherappan. 
Sept. 20, 1683. 

*\ 

Malebone. 
hth Mo. 30, 1683. 




Maugkhoughai'n. 
4th Mo. 3, 1684. 




Shakakoppek. 
bth Mo. 30, 1685. 



King Tnmanent. 
June 15, 1692. 




Mettam icon. 
June 7, 1684. 



King Tangours. 
June 15, 1692. 



upon their ambitious course (the confederacy seems 
to have been formed during the second decade of the 
seventeenth century), the Iroquois probably were rec- 
ognized as superiors by all the tribes of the Algonkins. 
Their Wyandot branch in Canada overawed the Al- 
gonkins there, though the latter were much more 
numerous. The Mohawks and Senecas kept in check 
the Mohegans of New York, New Jersey, and New 
England ; the Susquehanna Minquas and the Nanti- 
cokes dominated among the Lenape of Pennsylvania 
and Maryland ; the Erie Iroquois were where they 
could look after the Moncey tribes of the Lenape, 
the most warlike branch of that comparatively gentle 
race ; the Nottaways kept in check the branch of the 
Powhatan Lenapes, and the Tuscaroras were in guard 
upon the Cherokees and the Florida Indians. When 
the five nations of the Iroquois of the lakes — the Mo- 
hawks, Oneidas, Senecas, Cayugas, and Onondagas — 
formed their confederacy and entered upon their 
career of conquest their conduct was obnoxious to 
their kindred both north and south of them, and 
they speedily found themselves at war both with the 
Wyandots in Canada, the Eries in the West, and the 
Andastes-Conestogas on the Susquehanna. In such 
a state of affairs the semi-hostile relations long ex- 
isting between them and the Lenapes would of course 
be very embarrassing, and it was probably atthis time 
that they made a neutral nation of the tribe of the 
Algonkins who occupied the territory on both sides 
of the Niagara River between them and the Hurons,' 
subjecting the Lenapes of the Delaware and Hudson 
to the same sort of taboo. Heckewelder, whose crit- 
ical discernment was blinded by his unvarying par- 
tiality for the Lenape and his admiration for their 
mildness and amiability of character, has told a 



1 The neuter nation were culled by the Senecas Kahkwae, and by the 
French A tliwandarom, Attiwendaronki, AlirhayenreneU, Hlmgenratlias, or 
Attimddarom. The Niagara Eiver, flowing through their territory, was 
called Ongwiaahra, or river of the neutrals. This tribe in 1640, Re- 
cording to Lallemant, numbered forty villages, twelve thousand souls. 
(" Jesuit Relations," quoted by Parkmau.) 



40 



HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA. 



story, often repeated, of how the Delawares were 
made " women," or reduced to a state of neutrality, 
by the astute contrivance and diplomatic dissem- 
bling of the Iroquois, who are said to have induced 
them to assume metaphorically the garments of 
women and surrender their warlike apparatus upon 
the pretext that there was an exalted and honorable 
merit in the feminine function of peace-maker. This 
might suit the notions of a simple-hearted Moravian 
missionary like Hecke welder; but, stripped of its sen- 
timental environment, the naked fact seems to be that 
the Iroquois, finding they had these wars with their 
own kindred on their hands, disarmed the Lenapes 
and the Attiwandarons who surrounded them, and 
who had become by conquest more or less their trib- 
utaries, and guaranteed to them both peace and pro- 
tection if they would abstain from hostilities on 
cither side. It is likely that the Hurons and the 
Susquehannas also ratified these guarantees on their 
own behalf. The compact put a species of taboo upon 
the neutralized tribes. Their persons, their property, 
and their territory were to be respected by the bellig- 
erents, and while war-parties could march through 
their country, it was not to be made the scene of 
conflict, nor were their villages, plantations, or trade 
to be disturbed. The neuter nations could frequent the 
countries of both the hostiles with the impunity of am- 
bassadors or heralds. At the same time they were 
classed as " women,'' were treated as such, and Heck- 
ewelder did not need to be told that the name of 
woman was an epithet of reproach which no nation 
of warriors would submit to save under the pressure 
of dire necessity. Nor did the enforced neutrality of 
the Lenape protect them from the contempt and the 
tyranny of the Iroquois. After these had conquered 
their enemies they did not respect the terms of the 
convention with the Lenapes. During Governor 
Fletcher's rule in Pennsylvania the latter appealed 
to him to save them from the necessity of going to 
war with the French, as they had been ordered to do 
by the Five Nations; and at the time of the consum- 
mation of the " walking treaty" in 1744, when the 
Delawares were dissatisfied with the results of the 
contract, they were brutally told by the Iroquois that 
they had no rights and no say in the matter whatever ; 
they were women, and could not sell land without 
consent of their masters; they had lost their senses, 
and deserved to be taken by the hair of the head and 
jerked around as some lords of creation are i n the hab it 
of serving their wives in order to brighten their wits. 
They were, in fine, ordered to remove into the inte- 
rior of Pennsylvania, where they could be " watched," 
and they obeyed. Here after a while they were 
joined by their kindred, the Shawanese, from the 
valleys and mountains of Virginia, and by some frag- 
ments of Maryland and other tribes. They made war 
upon the whites, and after the Revolution, in Ohio and 
Western Pennsylvania, in league with the tribes of 
the Eastern prairies, they finally forced the survi- 



vors of the Five Nations to remove the taboo and 
the stigma of womanhood from them. 

The Maryland and Pennsylvania Mingoes were a 
tribe of stalwart warriors, whose fighting qualities were 
of a superior sort, and their strategy equal to that of 
their kinsmen on the lakes. Prior to a.d. 1600 they 
are said to have been at war with the Mohawks, whom 
they wellnigh exterminated in the course of a ten 
years' struggle. Capt. Smith found this war still rife 
when he met the Susquehannas in 1608. The name 
he gave to the Mohawks was Massawomakes. In 
1633 De Vries found them at war with the Lenape 
bands on the east side of the Delaware, the Arme- 
wamen and the Sankikans. They were on good terms 
with the Dutch and the Swedes, with whom they had 
an extensive trade in peltries, by which they were 
supplied with fire-arms and ammunition ; and they 
were alternately at peace and war with Maryland and 
the Maryland Indians. They so harassed the Chesa- 
peake and Potomac tribes during the first ten years 
of the Maryland settlement that Governor Calvert in 
1642 proclaimed them as public enemies. In 1647 
they had thirteen hundred warriors trained to the use 
of fire-arms by Swedish soldiers. Then they offered 
their aid to the Canadian Wyandots, who were being 
crushed by the Five Nations, having first sent an 
embassy to Onondaga to propose a general peace be- 
tween the Iroquois cantons, which overtures were 
rejected by the Five Nations. In 1652 the Susque- 
hanna Andastes, in the presence of a Swedish deputy, 
ceded to Maryland all the territory of the Eastern 
Shore and that of the Western Shore from the Patux- 
ent to the Susquehanna, and four years later they were 
again at war with the Iroquois of the lakes, while the 
smallpox was destroying their population by whole- 
sale. They maintained a bold front, however, drove 
the Cayugas across Lake Ontario, and injured mate- 
rially the fur trade of the Senecas. The Iroquois, 
supported by the French, sent a force of eight hun- 
dred warriors against the Susquehanna fort in 1663, 
but it was too strong and well defended to be attacked, 
and a stratagem attempted by the Iroquois cost them 
twenty-five warriors, who were burned at the stake. 
The war continued until 1675, when it ended with the 
complete overthrow of the Susquehannas. Some of 
their warriors retreated into Maryland, and the mur- 
der of a portion of these led to Bacon's war in Vir- 
ginia, and a border war in Maryland which still fur- 
ther reduced the number of the surviving Mingoes. 
Finally they made peace both with the Five Nations 
and Lord Baltimore, and were permitted to remain 
at their ancient fort. From this time they began to 
dwindle away. They were at peace, however, with 
Pennsylvania from the time of Penn's treaty with 
their chief, Canoodagtoh, in 1701, until the last 
wretched remnant of the tribe, then only known as 
Conestogas, living on their reservation farm at Cones- 
toga, in Manor township, Lancaster County, were 
cruelly set upon by the Paxton rangers and brutally 



THE INDIANS. 



41 



murdered in Lancaster jail, whither the authorities 
had sent them for protection. Thus perished a race 
of formidable Indian warriors, hunters, and states- 
men, whose war-chief, Hoe.hitagete (Barefoot), is a 
Hector in Indian legend, and whose last survivor, 
" Logan,'' or Tah-gah-ju-te, is known to general fame 
as a master of that noble, sententious eloquence in 
which his race excels. Capt. Smith saw the Susque- 
hanna warriors in their prime, and describes them as 
'' such great and well proportioned men as are seldom 
seen, for the) 7 seemed like giants to the English ; yea, 
and to the neighbors, yet seemed of an honest and 
simple disposition, with much adoe restrained from 
adoring vs as Gods, ... for their language it may 
well beseame their proportions, sounding from them 
as a voyce in a vault. . . . Five of their chief wero- 
wances came aboord vs and crossed the Bay in their 
Barge. The picture of the greatest of them is signi- 
fied in the Mappe [accompanying Smith's narrative], 
the calfe of whose leg was three-quarters of a yard 
about, and all the rest of his limbes so answerable to 
that proportion that he seemed the goodliest man we 
ever beheld." 

The Iroquois of the Susquehanna, or Andastes, as 
their name and residence imply (Connadago, the 
name of their fort, signifying the same as andalagon, 
— from andata, village, — meaning he is in the house 
or village of ridge-poles), differed in their mode of 
dwelling from the Algonkins. The identity of the 
word for house and town shows that they, too, like the 
Wyandots and the Five Nations, lived in "long 
houses," on the community principle. In fact, with 
all the Indians, relationship and rank passed through 
the female ; the band represented the members of a 
family, and, among the Iroquois, as among the ancient 
Mexicans and the modern Zunis and Pueblo Indians, 
the family dwelt in one house and under one roof. 
This house was added to as the family increased in 
numbers and want, just as the bees add cells to 
their combs. No man or woman could marry in 
their own family, or with any one bearing the same 
totem or gens mark ; that is to say, descended from 
the same mother. The man or woman of the Bear, 
the Beaver, the Wolf, the Serpent, or the Tortoise 
totem or family could marry in any of the others, but 
no Tortoise could wed with Tortoise, nor Serpent with 
Serpent, etc. The children born to the woman of the 
Tortoise symbol became Tortoises, whether their 
father was Beaver or Wolf, or of any other family, 
and these families lived together in the long houses, 
the construction of which was as in the diagram 
below : 



) ' ' ' i I I 

I (7) A (6) A (5) A (4) A (3) A (2) A (1) B 

II |-| i _ l I - ! M l~i n 

II II I l_ J 1 LL LJ 



A, i>a.«niige-way ; B, entrance; (1) to (7), fire-pits. 



This house would accommodate seven fires, twenty- 
eight families, representing probably three or four 
generations and their increase by birth and accretion 
of wives and husbands. A Seneca long house, as it 
was in 1677, and as above represented, is described by 
Hon. Lewis H. Morgan in a paper called " A Study 
of the Houses of the American Aborigines," pub- 
lished in the first Annual Eeport of the Archaeologi- 
cal Institute of America, 1880. The facts are gath- 
ered from the description of Greenhalgh. " The 
interior of the house was divided into compartments 
at intervals of six or eight feet, leaving each chamber 
entirely open, like a stall, upon the passage-way or 
hall, which ran through the centre of the house from 
end to end. Between each four apartments, two on a 
side, was a fire-pit in the centre of the hall, used in 
common by their occupants. Thus a house with six 
fires would contain twenty-four apartments, and would 
accommodate as many families, unless some of the 
apartments were reserved for storage-rooms. Raised 
bunks were constructed around the three sides of each 
stall for beds, and the floor was slightly raised above 
the level of the ground. From the roof-poles were 
suspended strings of maize in the ear, braided to- 
gether by the husk ; also strings of dried squash and 
dried beans. Each house, as a rule, was occupied by 
related families, the mothers being sisters, own and 
collateral, who, with their children, belonged to the 
same gens or clan, while their husbands, the fathers of 
these children, belonged to other gentes, consequently 
the gens, or clan, of the mother predominated in 
numbers in the household, descent being in the female 
line. Whatever was taken in the hunt or raised by 
cultivation by any member of the household was for 
the common benefit. Provision was held as common 
stock within the household. The Iroquois had but 
one cooked meal each day, a dinner. Each house- 
hold, in the matter of the management of their food, 
was under the care of n matron. When the daily 
meal had been cooked at the several fires the matron 
was summoned. It was her duty to divide the food 
from the kettle to the several families within the 
house, according to their needs. What remained was 
put aside to await the further direction of the matron." 
This was the sort of communism in which the Iro- 
quois and their kin, the Minquas or Conestogas, lived, 
until the long houses finally disappeared under the 
influence of the whites. To this methodical and 
economical household communism the Iroquois un- 
doubtedly owe their tribal unity, their faculty of con- 
federating for defense and offense, and their military 
strength and political influence. John Bartram, in 
his account of his journey to Onondaga, in company 
with the Indian interpreter, Conrad Weiser, in 1743, 
gives a description of one of these long houses, in 
which he was entertained. It was the official house 
of the tribe, besides being a community home. 
" They showed us," he says, " where to lay our lug- 
gage and repose ourselves during our stay with them, 



42 



HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA. 



which was in the two end apartments of this large 
house. The Indians that came with us were placed 
over against us. This cabin is about eighty feet long 
and seventeen broad, the common passage six feet 
wide, and the apartments on each side five feet, raised 
a foot above the passage by a long sapling, hewed 
square, and fitted with joists that go from it to the 
back of the house. On these joists they lay large 
pieces of bark, and on extraordinary occasions spread 
mats made of rushes, which favor we had. On these 
floors they sit or lie down, every one as he will. The 
apartments are divided from each other by boards or 
bark, six or seven feet long from the lower floor to 
the upper, on which they put their lumber. . . . All 
the sides and roof of the cabin are made of bark, 
bound first to poles set in the ground, and bent round 
on the top, or set aflat for the roof as we set our 
rafters. Over each fireplace they leave a hole to let 
out the smoke, which in rainy weather they cover 
with a piece of bark, and this they can easily reach 
with a pole to perch it on one side or quite cover the 
hole." 

The Algonkins, the Lenni Lenapes in Pennsyl- 
vania, were also variously called Wapanacki (Euro- 
pean corruptions: Openaki, Openar/i, Abenaquh, and 
Apmakis). The Delaware regions appear to have 
been their principal seat, though affiliated and de- 
rivative nations of their stock were found from Hud- 
son's Bay to Florida, and from Lake Superior to East 
Tennessee. Forty tribes acknowledged the Lenapes 
as grandfather or parent stock. Their traditions, 
which are not always authentic, relate that the tribe 
once upon a time dwelt in the far distant wilds of the 
West, whence they moved eastward towards sunrise 
by slow stages, often passing a year in a single camp > 
but eventually reaching the bank of the Named Sipu, 
the River of Fish (Mississippi), where they found the 
Mengwes or Iroquois, migrating like themselves, but 
who had descended from the northwest. The Lenape 
scouts reported the country east of the river to be 
held by a people called the Allegewi (whence the 
name. Alleghany River and Mountains), who were 
numerous, tall, stout, some of them giants, all dwell- 
ing in intrenched or fortified towns. The Lenape 
were denied leave to settle among the Allegewi, but 
obtained permission to pass through their country. 
When they were half over the river, however, the 
Allegewi attacked and drove them back with great 
loss. The Lenape now formed an alliance with the 
Mengwe ; the two nations united forces, crossed the 
river, attacked the Allegewi, and after a long and 
desperate war defeated them and expelled them from 
their country, they fleeing southward. The conquered 
country was apportioned between the conquerors, the 
Mengwes choosing the northern part, along the lakes, 
the Lenapes choosing the more southern section, 
binding on both sides of the Ohio. Moving eastward 
still, they came finally to the Delaware River and the 
ocean, and thence spread beyond the Hudson on the 



north and beyond the Potomac on the south. This 
legend, however, is full of inconsistencies and incom- 
patibilities, and hardly answers to what was known of 
the condition and location of the great Algonkin race 
at the time of the first settlement of the whites among 
them. As to their origin as members of the human 
family, they have divers legends. They claim to have 
come out of a cave in the earth, like the woodchuck 
and the chipmuck ; to have sprung from a snail that 
was transformed into a human being and taught to 
hunt by a kind Manitou, after which it was received 
into the lodge of the beaver and married the beaver's 
favorite daughter. In another myth a woman is dis- 
covered hovering in mid-air above the watery waste 
of chaos. She has fallen or been expelled from 
heaven, and there is no earth to offer her a resting- 
place. The tortoise, however, rose from the depths 
and put his broad, shield-like back at her service, and 
she descended upon it and made it her abode, for its 
dome-like oval resembled the first emergence of dry 
land from the waters of the deluge. The tortoise 
slept upon the deep, and round the margin of his 
shell the barnacles gathered, the scum of the sea col- 
lected, and the floating fragments of the shredded 
sea-weed accumulated until the dry land grew apace, 
and by and by there was all that broad expanse of 
island which now constitutes North America. The 
woman, weary of watching, worn out with sighs for 
herlonesomeness, dropped off into a tranquil slumber, 
and in that sleep she dreamed of a spirit who came 
to her from her lost home above the skies, and of that 
dream the fruits were sons and daughters, from whom 
have descended the human race. 1 Another legend 
personifies the Great Spirit under the form of a gigan- 
tic bird that descended upon the face of the waters, 
and brooded there until the earth arose. Then the 
Spirit, exercising its creative power, made the plants 
and animals, and lastly man, who was formed out of 
the integuments of the dog, and endowed with a 
magic arrow that was to be preserved with great care, 
for it was at once a blessing and a safeguard. But 

| the man carelessly lost the arrow, whereupon the 
Spirit soared away upon its bird-like wings and was 

: no longer seen, and man had henceforth to hunt and 
struggle for his livelihood. Manabozho, relates the 
general Algonkin tradition, created the different 
tribes of red men out of the carcasses of different 
animals, the beaver, the eagle, the wolf, the serpent, 
the tortoise, etc. Manabozho, Messou, Michaboo, or 
Nanabush is a demi-god who works the metamor- 
phoses of nature. He is the king of all the beasts ; 
his father was the west wind, his mother the moon's 
great-grandfather, and sometimes he appears in the 
form of a wolf or a bird, but his usual shape is that 
of the Gigantic Hare. Often Manabozho masquerades 
in the figure of a man of great endowments and ma- 



1 CampaniilB' History of New Sweden. Dltponceau's translation, 
Book III. chap. i. 



THE INDIANS. 



43 



jestic stature, when he is a magician after the order 
of Prospero ; but when he takes the form of some 
impish elf, then he is more tricksy than Ariel, and 
more full of hobgoblin devices than Puck. " His 
powers of transformation are without limit; his 
curiosity and malice are insatiable;'' he has inspired 
a thousand legends; he is the central figure in the 
fairy realm of the Indian, which, indeed, is not very 
full nor genially peopled. Manabozho is the restorer 
of the world, submerged by a deluge which the ser- 
pent-manitous have caused. Manabozho climbs a 
tree, saves himself, and sends a loon to dive for mud 
from which he can make a new world. The loon fails 
to reach the bottom ; the muskrat, which next at- 
temps the feat, returns lifeless to the surface, but with 
a little sand in the bottom of its paws, from which 
the Great Hare is able to recreate the world. In other 
legends the otter and beaver dive in vain, but the 
muskrat succeeds, losing his life in the attempt. 1 

The Atlantic Algonkins, the Lenapes, were sub- 
divided into three tribes, of which the Unamis or the 
Tortoise were one, the Unalachto or Turkey the sec- 
ond, and the third the Wolf, the Mind. These were 
equally the tribal names and the totems of these 
tribes, of whom the greatest and most intelligent 
were the Unamis, living on the lower Delaware and 
adjacent streams near the tide, a fishing people, and 
to some extent planters as well as hunters, having 
numerous villages under minor chiefs, who were sub- 
ordinate to the great council of the nation. The 




DELAWARE INDIAN FORT. 
[From Campanius 1 " New Sweden."] 

Minsi, often called Monceys by the English, the most 
warlike of the tribes of Delaware Indians, dwelt in 
the interior, between the other tribes and the Iroquois. 
Their towns extended from their council-seat at the 
Minisink to the Hudson on the east, the Susque- 
hanna on the southwest, the Catskills on the north, 
and the Muskenecum hills in New Jersey. Subordi- 



1 Manabozho is also called Micliabou, Cliiabo, Tarenyawagon ; he is 
the Hiawatha of the Ojibways, the Onondagas, and Mr. Longfellow, — 
"Skilled in all the craft of hunters, 
Learned in all the lore of old men, 
In all youthful sports and pastimes, 
In all manly arts and labors." 



nate bands had their names from their places of 
residence, as the Shackamaxons and the Nesham- 
ineks, or from some other accidental circumstance. 

The Lenapes suffered much from the warlike pro- 
pensities and the strategic devices of the Iroquois, 
who did not hesitate to murder members of other 
tribes with the weapons of the Delawares in order to 
involve them in hostilities. In this way they pro- 
voked the Cherokees to fall upon the Lenapes, who 
suffered much in tne long and bloody war which en- 
sued. For nearly two generations after the first 
treaty between Deputy Governor Markham and the 
Lenapes in 1681, in which they surrendered lands to 
William Penn, these Indians maintained pacific re- 
lations with the whites of Pennsylvania. Still they 
had begun to suffer and to feel impatient in conse- 
quence of the increase and the pressure of the land- 
hungry English in the province. After their with- 
drawal to Wyoming and Shamokin by order of the Five 
Nations they were reinforced by the restless bands of 
their kindred, the Shawanese, who had settled as far 
south as the basin of the Cumberland River in Ken- 
tucky and Tennessee, whence they had been driven by 
the Creeks and Cherokees, a part north of the Ohio 
River, a part to the valley of Virginia about Win- 
chester, their principal band having crossed into the 
hilly section of South Carolina. They numbered 
about two thousand souls on the Susquehanna after 
the government of Pennsylvania allowed them to 
settle there. There were numerous treaties between 
the proprietary government and the Delawares, the 
Shawanese and their kindred, and the Mengwes 
from the time of Penn's negotiations in 1701 to 1754, 
the time of the first overt act of hostility on the part 
of the Lenape. The causes of this alienation after a 
peace of seventy years were the abuses in the Indian 
trade, which rested on avarice, rum, and fraud, de- 
spoiling and besotting the poor savages, whose wives 
were often debauched by the traders ; on the execu- 
tion of a Delaware chief, Wekahelah, in New Jersey 
for what was regarded as an accidental homicide, 2 
and on their being unjustly despoiled of their lands. 
The " walking treaty" was sorely resented by the 
Delawares. This is an unsavory part of the history 
of Pennsylvania. In 1685 Penn had secured a deed 
from Packenak, Essepertank, and some other chiefs 
of the Delawares for land from Neshaminy Creek 
westward " as far in the woods as a man could go in 
a day and a half." This land was not wanted at that 
time, and the treaty was left unexecuted. Penn's 
last will left to his grandson, William Penn, a tract of 

2 Smith, however, in his History of New Jersey, declares that the 
deed was a deliberate assassination, and the execution only took place 
after a legal trial and regular conviction and sentence. Weekqueliela^ 
as he styles the chief, was an Indian living near Shrewsbury, and of 
great account both among Christians and his own people, being a 
wealthy man with an extensive farm, cattle, horses, and negroes ; ho 
raised large wheat crops, had a handsome house, feather beds, curtainB. 
to his bed, etc., often entertiiined distinguished persons, and was thought 
to he fully civilized. 



44 



HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA. 



ten thousand acres. The grandson sold the devise to 
William Allen, a land speculator. Allen had the 
land located on the Minisink, in the country of the 
Minsis, where the whites had hought no territory. A 
land lottery was got up at the same time, and Indian 
lands about Easton were squatted upon. When the 
Minsis resented this, the Iroquois were called upon, 
and the Delawares forced to remove. In 1737, John 
and Thomas Penn conferred with the Indians at 
Pennsbury, and demanded a confirmation of the 
deed of 1685 ; the day and a half s walk was in- 
trusted to hired and trained runners, who ran out a 
line of eighty odd miles into the heart of the best 
reserved lands of the Indians on the Kittatinny 
range. The Indians denounced this as a fraud. 
Tedyuscund, the Delaware chief, at the conference at 
Easton in 1756, boldly declared against the swindle. 
Stamping his foot upon the ground, he told Governor 
Denny that — 

" This very ground that is under me was my land and inheritance, and 
it is taken from me by fraud. When I say this ground, I mean all the 
hind between Tohiccon Creekand Wyoming on the Susquehanna." And 
Tedyuscund explained his accusation with definite and unmistakable 
precision: " W T hen one man had formerly liberty to purchase lands, 
and he took the deed from the Indians for it and then dies, and after his 
death his children forge a deed like the true one, with the same Indian 
names to it, and thereby take lands from the Indians which they never 
sold, litis is fraud I Also, when one king has land beyond the river, and 
another king has land on this 6ide, both bounded by rivers, mountains, 
and springs, which cannot he moved; and the proprietaries, greedy to 
purchase-lauds, buy of one king what belongs to another, this likeioise is 
fraud /" 

The fact was indisputable ; the French fanned the 
flame of discontent and furnished arms, and the Dela- 
wares went to war, harassing the frontier settlements 
and doing many deeds of blood. The Quakers patched 
up a peace with them ; they fought for the American 
side in the Revolution, but their doom was sealed. 
They moved West, joined the Shawanese, the Miamis, 
the Maumees, the Wyandots, and Iroquois ; went 
farther West, to Missouri, to Kansas, to the Indian 
Territory. To-day the tribe has ceased to exist as a 
tribe ; a few scattered hunters and scouts are the sole 
survivors of this representative and leading tribe of 
the great Algonkin race, who once occupied a terri- 
tory extending over fifteen degrees of latitude and 
twenty-five degrees of longitude in the most fertile 
parts of the United States, where now there is a popu- 
lation of thirty million souls and an annual value of 
products exceeding $4,000,000,000. 

The Lenapes had not the compact tribal unity of 
the Iroquois, nor did they seem to dwell like them in 
communal houses, yet Mr. Morgan is convinced that 
the community system was more or less established 
among all the American Indians ; he traces it among 
the Mandans and the Sioux, the Arickarees and the 
Cherokees, and declares that Lewis and Clark found 
it among the Columbia River Indians, in Oregon, in 
1808. Campanius, in speaking of the Delawares, says 
that they have no towns or fixed places of habitation ; 
" they mostly wander about from one place to another, 



and generally go to those places where they think 
they are most likely to find the means of support. . . . 
When they travel, they carry their meats with them 
wherever they go and fix them on poles, under which 
they dwell. When they want fire, they strike it out 
of a piece of dry wood, of which they find plenty ; and 
i n that manner they are never at a loss for fire to warm 
themselves or to cook their meat." ■ 

Iu constructing their lodges, says Campanius, the 
Lenapes " proceed in this manner: they fix a pole in 
the ground and spread their mats around it, which 
are made of the leaves of the Indian corn matted 
together ; then they cover it above with a kind of 
roof made of bark, leaving a hole at the top for the 
smoke to pass through ; they fix hooks in the pole on 
which they hang their kettles ; underneath they put 
a large stone to guard themselves from the fire, and 
around it they spread their mats and skins on which 
they sleep. For beds, tables, and chairs they use 
nothing else; the earth serves them for all these 
purposes. They have several doors to their houses, 
generally one on the north and one on the south side. 
When it blows hard, they stop up one of them with 
bark, and hang a mat or skin before the other. Some- 
times they fasten their doors to guard themselves 
against the sudden attacks of their enemies, and 
they surround their houses with round or square 
palisades, made of logs or planks, which they fasten 



1 Campanius speaks far too lightly here of the complicated, arduouB 
methods of obtaining fire which prevail among savages, as if they in- 
herited the possession and uses of flint and steel. When and how bar- 
barous nations learned to produce fire is a mystery. Their first knowl- 
edge of fire and its effectB and uses could of course he easily learned 
from the volcano and the thunderbolt; but how came they to know that 
friction would generate a degree of heat such as would result in flame? 
It could not have been by experiment; was itadiBcovery which came by 
accident, or was it a consequence of observation, such as that of the fric- 
tion of one falling tree upon the trunk of another? The process is such 
a difficult one in getting fire by friction, and its civilizing influences 
are so extensive, that the question seems to be worth an archaeological 
investigation. In the Osage logenditis the Master of Life himself who 
instructs the snail-man in the use of fire and the cooking of meat. The 
Ojibwavs hold fire to be a sacred mystery. The flint from which it is 
struck is their emblem of purity, and the lighting of the peace-pipe is 
one of the most sacerdotal acts. The sacrifice of fire is a sacrifice to fire 
likewise, and the ancient and original worship of all the Indians was 
probably directed to the sun, the source of fire. The Indians had great 
difficulty in getting fire before they learned the use of flint and steel. 
Some tribes kept fires burning always, and had watchers to see that 
they never wen tout. The methods of generating it by friction are vari- 
ous. Gen. George Crook has described a fire-stick used by the Indians 
of the Siena Nevada and Cascade ranges. "The fire-stick," he says, 
"consists of two pieces. The horizontal stick is generally from one foot 
to a foot and a half long, a couple or three inches wide, and ab.>ut one 
inch thick, of some soft, dry wood, frequently the sap of the juniper. 
The upright stick is usually some two feet long and from a quarter to half 
an inch in diameter, with the lower end round or elliptical, and of the 
hardest material they can find. In the sage-bush country it is made of 
'grease-wood.' When they make fire they lay the first piece in a hori- 
zontal position with the flat side down, and place the round end of the 
upright near the edge of the other stick; then taking the upright be- 
tween the hands they give it a swift rotary motion, and as constant use 
wears a hole in the lower stick, they cut a nick in its outer edge down 
to a level with the bottom of the hole. The motion of the upright works 
the ignited powder out of this nick, and it is there caught and applied 
to a piece of spunk or some other highly combustible substance, and 
from this the fire is started." (Smithsonian Report, 1871.) 



THE INDIANS. 



45 



in the ground." The mode of fortifying an Indian 
village was to dig a ditch around it, throwing up the 
dirt on the inside. The trees of which the posts or 
"puncheons" of the palisades were made were felled 
by means of fire, the burnt parts hacked with hatchets 
until the tree was cut through in proper lengths. The 
logs were then planted upright in the embankment, 
in one or several concentric rows, those of each row 
bent towards the others till they intersected. Where 
the palisades crossed, a gallery of timber was thrown 
for the use of the defenders. These works were not 
regular except in cases where the Indians were taught 
by foreign soldiers, as the Hurons by the French, the 
Iroquois by the Dutch, and the Susquehannocks by 
the Swedes. The palisades were planted first in rude 
post-holes, and the dirt from the ditch thrown up 
around them. 1 The chief articles of furniture were 
the kettle, the dishes of bark and cedar wood, the curi- 
ous-woven baskets and the calabashes. In Campa- 
nius' time the Indian manufacture of pottery had 
almost ceased, European utensils serving their ends 
so much better. Pastorius, speaking of the Indian 
diet, said, " I have once seen four Indians eating to- 
gether with great delight ; their repast consisted of a 
pompion (pumpkin) boiled in water, without any 
meat or fat or any kind of seasoning ; their tables 
and seats were the naked earth ; their spoons were 
muscle-shells, out of which they dipped the warm 
water ; and their plates were large leaves of trees 
that stood near them.'' Yet the Indian commissariat 
was not entirely bare. Besides their meats and fish, 
fresh and dried, their melons and squashes, beans and 
peas and berries, of which they dried many for winter 
use, there were several roots and plants of which they 
ate largely. In spring and summer many succulent 
herbs served them for greens and salads ; they con- 
sumed regularly the tuckalwe {Sclerotium giganteum), 
the tauquauh of the Mohegans, the petahgunnug of 
the Delawares, called "Indian loaf" by the whites. 
It is a curious root, fancied by some to be a sort of 
truffle, the shape of a flattened globe, and varying in 
size from an acorn to the bigness of a man's head. 
Kalm considers the tuckahoe to be identical with the 
Arum Virginianum, the wake-robin. It was roasted 
in the ashes, and the root of the Arum triphyllvm, 
the Indian turnip, prepared in the same way, was 
deprived of its noxious qualities and pungent, bitter 
taste, and yielded a wholesome farina. The Apios 
titberosa (Glycine apios of Linnreus), the ground-nut 
or wild bean, was also a regular article of diet, to- 
gether with the arrow-head (Saglttaria sagittafolia) 
and the root of the golden-club ( Orontium aquat- 
imtm). 

In winter the huts of the Lenape were not very 
comfortable, no matter how picturesque they might 
be, but probably they afforded as nice lodgings as 
those of the English gipsies. The interior of the 



1 Parkman, 

chapter. 



'Jesuits in America." Introduction. An invaluable 



cabin was stained and dingy with smoke that could 
find no regular outlet, and it was so pungent and 
acrid as to cause much inflammation of the eyes and 
blindness in old age. The fleas and other vermin 
were bad, and the children were noisy and unruly 
beyond parallel, raising a pandemonium in each 
lodge, which the shrill shrieking of the Hecate-like 
squaws added to without controlling it. Parkman 
draws a, vivid picture of a lodge on a winter night, 
lighted up by the uncertain flickers of resinous flame, 
that sent fitful flashes through the dingy canopy of 
smoke, a bronzed group encircling the fire, cooking, 
eating, gambling, or amusing themselves with idle 
chaff; grizzly old warriors, scarred with the marks of 
repeated battles ; shriveled squaws, hideous with toil 
and hardship endured for half a century; young war- 
riors with a record to make, vain, boastful, obstrep- 
erous; giddy girls, gay with paint, ochre, wampum, 
and braid; "restless children, pell-mell with restless 
dogs." What a long step from this scene to the quiet 
decorum, the serene beauty, and the accumulation of 
comforts and conveniences of the civilization which 
has succeeded it ! 

The tools of the Lenape were rude and poor, strictly 
those of the stone age, for they had no knowledge of 
any metal save a little copper for ornament, yet they 
handled them with great skill and neatness. 

'■They make their bows with the limb of a tree," says Campanius, "of 
about a man's length, and their bow-strings out of the sinews of ani- 
mals; they make their arrows out of a reed a yard and a half long, and 
at one end they fix in a piece of hard wood of about a quarter's length, 
at the end of which they make a hole to fix in the head of the arrow, 
which is made of black flint-stone, or of hard bone or horn, or the teeth 
of large fishes or animals, which they fasten in with fish glue in such a 
manner that the water cannot penetrate ; at the other end of the arrow 
they put feathers. They can also tan and prepare the skins of ani- 
mals, which they paint afterwards in their own way. They make much 
use of painted feathers, with which they adorn their skins and bed- 
covers, binding them with a kind of network, which is very handsome, 
and fastens the feathers very well. "With these they make light and 
warm clothing and covering for themselves; with the leaves of Indian 
corn and reeds they make purses, mats and baskets, and everything 
else that they want. . . . They make very handsome and strong mats 
of fine roots, which they paint with all kinds of figures ; they hang their 
walls with these mats, and make excellent bed-clothes out of them. 
The women spin thread and yarn out of nettles, hemp, and some plants 
unknown to us. Governor Printz had a complete set of clothes, with 
coat, breeches, and belt, made by these harbarians with their wampum, 
which was curiously wrought with the figures of all kinds of animals. 
. . . They make tobacco-pipes out of reeds about a man's length; the 
bowl is made of horn, and to contaiu a great quantity of tobacco. They 
generally present these pipes to their good friends when they come u> 
visit them at their houses and wish them to stay some time longer; 
then the friends cannot go away without having first smoked out of 
the pipe. They make them, otherwise, of red, yellow, and blue clay, of 
which there is a great quantity in the country; also of white, gray, 
green, brown, black, and blue stones, which are so soft that they can 
be cut with a knife. . . . Their boats are made of thebark of cedar and 
birch trees, hound together and lashed very strongly. They carry them 
along wherever they go, aud when they come to some creek that they 
want to get over they launch them and go whither they please. They 
also used to make boats out of cedar trees, which they burnt inside and 
scraped off the coals with sharp stones, hones, or muscle shells." 

Charles Thomson, in the fragmentary " Essay 
upon Indian Affairs," found among his manuscripts, 
speaks of the very unusually good opportunities 



46 



HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA. 



afforded him in 1757 (while at Easton as commis- 
sioner for Pennsylvania to negotiate a peace with 
the Indians) to study their institutions, manners, and 
customs. 

By a concurrence of circumstances, he says, he 
gained the confidence of the Indians, was admitted to 
their councils, and "obliged to enter deep into their 
politics and investigate their claims." 1 Of the In- 
dians he says, after speaking of their diet, to which, 
in addition to the articles of food already enumerated, 
he contributes the very prolific and nutritious sweet 
potato (which might be kept during winter in kilns 
dug under the lodge fireplaces) : 

"They were perfect strangers to the use of iron. The instruments 
with which they dug up the ground were of wood, or a stone fastened 
to a handle of wood. Their hatchets for cutting were of stone, sharp- 
ened to an edge by rubbing and fastened to a wooden handle. Their 
arrows were pointed with flint or bones. "What clothing they wore was 
of the skins of animals took in hunting, and their ornaments were prin- 
cipally of feathers. They all painted or daubed their face with red. 
The men suffered only a tuft of hair to grow on the crown of theirhead; 
the rest, whether on their head or faces, they prevented from growing 
by constantly plucking it out by the roots, so that they always appeared 
as if they were bald and beardless. 2 

" Many were in the practice of marking their faces, arms, and breast 
by pricking theskiu with thorns and rubbing thepartswith a fine pow- 
der made of coal (charcoal), which, penetrating the punctures, left an 
indelible stain or mark, which remained as long as they lived. The 
punctures were made in figures according to their several fancies. The 
only part of the body which they covered was from the waist half-way 
down the thighs, and their feel they guarded with a kind of shoe made 
of hides of buffaloes or deerskin, laced tight over the instep and up to 
the ankles with thongs. It was aud still continues to be a common 
practice among the men to slit their ears, putting something into the 
hole to prevent its closing, and then by hanging weights to the lower 
part to stretch it out, so that it hangs down the cheek like a large ring. 
They had no knowledge of the use of silver or guld, though some of 
these metals were found among the Southern IndianB. Instead of 
money they uBed a kind of beads made of conch-shell, manufactured 
in a curious manner. These beads were made,Bome uf the white, some 
of the black or colored parts of the shell. They were formed into cyl- 
inders about one-quarter of an inch long and a quarter of an inch in 
diameter. They were round and highly polished and perforated length- 
wise with a small hole, by which they Btruug them together and wove 
them iuto belts, some of which, by a proper arrangement of the beads 
of different colors, were figured like carpeting with different figures, 
according to the various uses for which they were designed. These were 
made use of in their treaties aud intercourse with each other, and served 
to assist their memory aud preserve the remembrance of transactions. 
When different tribeB or nationB made peace or alliance with each other 
they exchanged belts of one sort; when they excited each other to war 
they used auother sort. Hence they were distinguished by the name of 
peace belts or war belts. Every message sent from one tribe to another 
wab accompanied with a string of these beads or a belt, and the string 
01 belt was smaller or greater according to the weight and importance 
of the subject. These beads were their riches. They were worn as 
bracelets on the arms and like chains round the neck by way of orna- 
ments." 3 

1 He was in fact adopted by them. He took minutes of the conference 
proceedings in short-hand, and these were so accurate as to be preferred 
by the commissioners to the official record, and so just to the Indians 
as to win their profound gratitude. They adopted him into the Lenape 
nation, and gave him the name of Wugh-wu-hiw-mo-end, " the man who 
tells the truth." 

2 Naturally " impubea and imberbea" said Dr. Duuglas ; but Proud de- 
nied that this was the case with all the Pennsylvania Indians. The 
habit of going naked and anointing their persons with unguents made 
the resort to depilatories very natural. 

3 There is enough concurrent testimony to it to warrant the conclu- 
sion that the original purpose of wamjjum was exclusively mnemonic. 



The Indians were few in number, says Mr. Thom- 
son, as compared with the extent of territory. How 
few has not been generally realized by writers on this 
subject. Gordon, who is always moderate, thinks that 
at the most populous period there must have been less 
than forty-seven thousand Indians within the limits 
of Pennsylvania. Yet there have been repeated esti- 
mates of fifteen million Indians in the country at the 
time of the arrival of the English, and we have seen 
it confidently claimed that there could not have been 
less than three thousand Indians — six hundred war- 
riors — within the present limits of Philadelphia two 
hundred and fifty years ago. The computation is 
very extravagant, and there are means of showing it 
to be so. The Virginia mode of calculating used to 
be to allow one Indian for every square mile. This 
would give three millions to the United States, forty- 
six thousand to Pennsylvania, one hundred and thirty 
to Philadelphia. But the estimate is too liberal. A 
hunting tribe of Indians cannot subsist upon a square 
mile of territory per capita. According to Lyell, the 
geologist, "it has been computed that eight hundred 
acres furnish only as much subsistence to a commu- 
nity of hunters as half an acre under cultivation.'' 
The United States, with five acres per capita under 



Tt was a sort of memoria technica, like the knotted cords of the ancient 
Peruvians, and doubtless, if the Indians had had intelligence enough to 
word it out, a system of written language could have been constructed 
of wampum bead figures as expressive as that of a signal code and more 
serviceable than the Runic arrow-head writingofthe Northmen. There 
is a much greater chance for variety of expression in strings of beads of 
two colors than there is in Prof. Morse's telegraphic alphabet of dots and 
lineB. Wampum was given not only as a present and a courteous reminder, 
but as a threat and a warning. Thus, when, at Lancaster in 1747 the chiefs 
of the Five Nations forbade the Lenapes to Bell any more land, and or- 
dered them to remove to the interior, they emphasized the command by 
handing them a belt. If the belts presented before the uses of wam- 
pum had degenerated and become comparatively meaningless could 
have been closely and intelligently examined, it is likely that some sort 
of language could have been made out of the varying forms of the belts 
aud strings and the different arrangements of the beads. The use of 
wampum for ornament was secondary to its use menioriler. As money 
its use came about in this way : It was a memorandum of exchange, of 
business transactions. Passyund, of the Munsis, agreed to let his daugh- 
ter marry the Bon of Secanee, of the Unamis, and to give with her a 
dowry of so many beaver-skins, in return for which Secanee's son was 
to hunt so many days for Passyund. How bind the bargain and prove 
it? By making a mutual note of it in the exchange of wampum. 
That particular belt or striug represented and vouched for that particu- 
lar transaction. Menanee, on the Alleghany, agrees to sell toTamanee, 
on the Delaware, a dozen buffalo robes for forty fathoms of duffle, with 
buttons, thread, and red cloth to ornament. A belt is exchanged to 
prove the transaction. But that cannot be completed till the goods are 
exchanged. The next step is easy : to put a certain fixed value on each 
bead, so that when Tamance pays a belt to Menanee for his robes, Men- 
anee can at once hand the beltover to the trader Mho has the goods and 
get from him the duffle and trimmings. Viewed in this light wampum 
takes rank as an instrument of as various and important uses as any 
ever employed by niau. It is as if the rosary of the pious Catholic were 
suddenly invested with the powers of a historical monument, a diplo- 
matic memorandum and business "stub 11 book, a short-hand inscription 
system, which is equally understood by tribes of every variety of lan- 
guage and dialect, a currency of uniform value and universal circulation 
in the exchange of a continent, a bank of deposit, a jewelry and per- 
sonal ornament, all in one. There is no parallel instance in all the 
economic history of mankind of an article bo utterly useless and value- 
less in itself acquiring such a wide and multifarious range of derivative 
uses and values. 



THE INDIANS. 



47 



cultivation, are ODly able to spare seven and one-half 
per cent, of food products for export. Thus there are 
four and six-tenths acres needed to keep each member 
of this highly cultivated population. On the basis of 
Lyell's computation, therefore, each member of a pop- 
ulation of hunters would require eleven and one-half 
square miles to keep him. There is a scientific reason 
for this enormous allowance, which Liebig explains 
in his "Animal Chemistry." "A nation of hunters 
on a limited space," he says, "is utterly incapable of 
increasing its numbers beyond a certain point, which 
is soon attained. The carbon necessary for respira- 
tion must be obtained from the animals, of which only 
a limited number can live on the space supposed. 
These animals collect from plants the constituents of 
their organs and their blood, and yield them in turn 
to the savages who live by the chase alone. They 
again receive this food, unaccompanied by those 
compounds destitute of nitrogen" which, during the 
life of the animals, served to support the respiratory 
process. In such men, confined to an animal diet, it 
is the carbon of the flesh and of the blood which must 
take the place of starch and sugar. But fifteen pounds 
of flesh contain no more carbon than four pounds of 
starch, and while the savage, with one animal and an 
equal weight of starch, could maintain life and health 
for a certain number of days, he would be compelled, 
if confined to flesh, in order to procure the carbon 
necessary for respiration during the same time, to 
consume five such animals." Such Indian statistics 
as we possess bear out these conclusions. The hunt- 
ing range of the Iroquois Five Nations was never less 
than sixty thousand square miles. They had corn and 
other sources of carbonaceous food. They were pros- 
perous, comparatively rich, and took tribute and sup- 
plies from the tribes surrounding them. Yet, by care- 
ful comparisons made in 1877 under the auspices of 
the Bureau of Education, it is ascertained that they 
never exceeded a population of twenty thousand 
souls, — four thousand warriors, — three square miles 
per capita. This is a guide to the number of the 
tribes surrounding them. The Iroquois in 1665 had 
two thousand three hundred and fifty warriors, — 
eleven thousand seven hundred and fifty souls. The 
Susquehannas, who put old men and boys in the field, 
never had more than two thousand warriors, — eight 
thousand souls. The Canada Hurons never exceeded 
thirty thousand in all. The most populous branch of 
the Algonkins, the Mohegans of New York and New 
England, Parkman computes could not have had more 
than eight thousand fighting men, — forty thousand in 
all. The Lenapes of Pennsylvania and New Jersey 
could scarcely have reached half so many. We do not 
find any mention among them of populous towns like 
those of the Pequods, the Wampanoags, the Iroquois, 
the Hurons, the Powhatans. They had nothing but 
small and obscure villages, and of these not many. 
They had but six hundred fighting men from the 
Delaware to the Ohio in 1759. Proud, who knew 



much about them, is not able to enumerate many 
bands. 1 

Secretary Thomson remarks that it is difficult to 
distinguish the Indians into distinct and different 
nations : 

"Almost every nation being divided into tribes, and these tribes sub- 
divided into families, who from relationship or friendship united to- 
gether and formed towns or clans; these several tribes, families, und 
towns have commonly each a particular name and chief, or head man, 
receive messages, and hold conferences with strangers and foreigners, 
and hence they are frequently considered by strangers and foreigners 
as distinct and separate nations. Notwithstanding this, it is found 
upon closer examination and further inquiry that Ihe nation is com- 
posed of several of these tribes, united together under a kind of federal 
government, with laws and customs by which they are ruled. Their 
governments, it is true, are very lax, except as to peace and war, each 
individual having in his own hand the power of revenging injuries, 
and when murder is committed the next relation having power to take 
revenge, by putting to death the murderer, unless he can convince the 
chiefs and head men that he had just cause, and by their means can 
pacify the family by apresent, and thereby put an end to the feud. The 
matters which merely regard a town or family are settled by the chiefs 
and head men of the town ; those which regard the tribe, by a meeting 
of the chiefs from the several towns ; and those that regard the nation, 
such as the making wnr or concluding peace with the neighboring na- 
tions, are determined on in a national council, composed of the chiefB 
and head warriors from every tribe. Every tribe has a chief or head 
man, and there is one who presides over the nation. In every town they 
have a council house, where the chief assembles the old men and ad 
visi'S what is best. In every tribe there is a place, which is commonly 
the town in which the chief resides, where the head mon of the towns 
meet to consult on the business that concerns them ; and in every mat- 
ter there is a grand council, or what they call a council-fire, where the 
beads of the tribes and chief warriors convene to determine on peace 
or war. In these several councils the greatest order and decorum is ob- 
served. In a council of a town all the men of the town may attend, 
the chief opens the business, and cither gives his opinion of what is best 
or takes the advice of such of the old men as are heads of families, or 
most remarkable for prudence and knowledge. None of the young men 
are allowed or presume to speak, but the whole assembly at the end of 
every sentence or speech, if they approve it, express their approbation 
by a kind of hum or noise in unison with the speaker. The same order 
is observed in the. meetings or councils of the tribes and in the national 
councils." 

Gordon, in his "History of Pennsylvania," observes 
of the language of the Lenape that it is said to be 
" rich, sonorous, plastic, and comprehensive in the 
highest degree," adding that a cultivated language 
usually denotes great civilization. On the contrary, 
a cultivated, elaborate language, abounding in regu- 
lar forms and great numbers of distinctions, qualifi- 
cations, conjugations, and declensions, is not a sign of 
civilization, but the opposite, to a certain extent. 
The Sanscrit is more perfect and comprehensive and 
regular than the Greek, the Greek than the German, 
the Latin than the French, the Anglo-Saxon [pace 
Mr. Edward A. Freeman) than the English. The 
Indian languages were comprehensive in the sense, of 
being complicated with many forms. They were not 
plastic, however. That is the property of the lan- 
guages of civilization, which are intended to be la- 
bor-saving machines. They are plastic, oblique, 
elliptic, direct, waste no muscular force on the regu- 

l He mentions the Assunpinks, Kancocas, Neshamineks, Shackamax- 
ons, Mantas (at Gloucester, N. J.), the Tuteloes (who were remnants of 
the Virginia Nottoways), Minisiuks, Pomptons, Namtaconks, Capiti- 
nasses, and Gauheos. 



48 



HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA. 



larity of forms. The Algonkin tongue, like all the 
Indian languages, belonged to what philologists re- 
gard as one of the lowest orders of speech. It is of 
the incorporative or polysynthetic type. In the words 
of Prof. Whitney, " it tends to the excessive and ab- 
normal agglomeration of distinct, significant elements 
in its words, whereby, on the one hand, cumbrous 
compounds are formed as the names of objects, 1 and 
a character of tedious and time-wasting polysyllabism 
is given to the language, — see, for example, the three 
to ten syllabled numeral and pronominal words in our 
Western Indian tongues, or the Mexican name for 
'goat,' kwa-hwauh-tentsone, literally, 'head-tree (horn), 
lip-hair (beard),' or 'the horned and bearded one,' — 
and, on the other hand, and what is of more import- 
ance, an unwieldy aggregation, verbal or gwosi-verbal, 
is substituted for the phrase or sentence, with its dis- 
tinct and balanced members. . . Not only do the 
subjective and objective pronouns enter into the sub- 
stance of the verb, but also a great variety of modi- 
fiers of the verbal action, adverbs, in the form of 
particles and fragments of words ; thus almost every- 
thing which helps to make expression forms a part of 
verbal conjugation, and the verbal paradigm becomes 
wellnigh interminable. An extreme instance of ex- 
cessive synthesis is afforded in the Cherokee word- 
phrase, wi-ni-taw-ti-ge-gi-na-li-skaw-lung-ta-naw-ne-li- 
ti-se-sti, 'they will by that time have nearly finished 
granting [favors] from a distance to thee and me.' " 

Such a language could never become the vehicle of 
science or the agent of business. As Bancroft has 
expressed it, the Indian's language was "held in 
bonds by external nature." It could not and did not 
rise above the narrow area of his imperfect experiences. 
It was poor just where the Indian mind and morals 
were impoverished. " It had no name for continence 
or justice, for gratitude or holiness," and equally not 
for covetousness. Loskiel has said that it required the 
labor of years to make the Lenape intellect capable 
of expressing abstract truth. Eliot could only trans- 
late the gospels by resorting to a series of happy 
analogies. The Indian tongue was materialistic, but, 
because it proceeded from one obvious visible object 
to another, it abounded in trope and metaphor, be- 
came highly picturesque, and was furnished with rich 
supplies from the most efficient armories of eloquence. 
Plain dealing became " a straight and broad path;" 



1 " They ]i:ive but few radical words, but they compound their words 
without end; by this their language becomes sufficiently copious, and 
leaves room for a good deal of art to please a delicate ear. Sometimes 
one word among them includes an entire definition of a thing ; for ex- 
ample, they call wine oncharadeaelioengstseraglierie^s to say 'a liquor 
made from the juice of the grape.' The words expressing things lately 
come to their knowledge are all compounds; they have no labials in their 
language, nor can they pronounce perfectly any word wherein there is 
a labial, and when one endeavors to teach them to pronounce these 
words, they tell one they think it ridiculous that they must shut their 
lips to speak. Their language abounds in gutturals and strong aspira- 
tions; these make it very sonorous and bold, and their speeches abound 
with metaphors, after the manner of the Eastern nations." (Proud, 
"History of Pennsylvania," ii. 300. J 



if the word was peace, it was conveyed by the con- 
crete idea of " burying the hatchet ;" to conciliate was 
to " polish the chain of friendship ;" to be allies was 
to "eat with one mouth ;" to condole with a person 
was to "wipe the tears from his eye;" to repair an 
injury was to " wipe the blood off the council-seat ;" 
when James Logan was ill and retired he was said to 
be " hid in the bushes ;" to be slow to resent injuries 
was to "sit with the head between the legs." An 
Indian cannot conceive of father in the abstract; he 
j must say " my father," or "your father." His pan- 
j theon was a procession of idealized images of single 
! objects, animate or inanimate; every tree, every ani- 
j mal, every stone had its particular " manitou," but 
Gitche Manitou, the Father of Life, was only a faint 
and colorless adumbration of the Great Spirit, if 
indeed it existed at all previous to intercourse with 
the whites. Eliot could not find an Indian word to 
express the act of kneeling, he had to resort to para- 
phrase to express the idea; in fact, words must all 
the time be coined to embody the primal European 
conceptions of faith, submission, reverence, religion, 
goodness. Yet the Indian vocabulary is rich in words 
which signify the dark and tumultuous passions, hate, 
revenge, etc., and the acts that result. In the forms 
of homicide the Indian language is as copious as an 
old English indictment for murder, and there is no 
lack of words to express what is bad, vicious, filthy, 
obscene, and shameful. 

The Indian's end in life was to act out the propen- 
sities of his untamed nature. He had no word to 
express continence, and chastity was but a half-formed 
idea in his brain. He bought his wife, and purity of 
blood was assured by the rule of descent on the female 
side. Marriage was a physical convenience and a 
transaction by purchase ; religion was as dim perhaps, 
with rites of sacrifice and worship left to the indi- 
vidual will. But vengeance was a duty, and revenge 
the strongest and most enduring passion of the In- 
dian's soul. To gratify it time, distance, hardship, 
danger, all went for nothing ; the stealthy blow, the 
reeking scalp torn from the prostrate victim, the yell 
of triumph when the deed was done — this was com- 
pensation for all. Nor did death suffice ; the enemy, 
public or private, must be tortured, and nothing but 
his agony and his groans could satiate the wolfish 
thirst of the savage for blood. His warfare was con- 
ducted by stealth and strategy and surprise; he imi- 
tated the panther, not the lion, in his assaults, and he 
lay by his victim and mangled him like the tiger. 
Sometimes he ate his victim, if he was renowned, 
that all of the valor and virtue of the slain might not 
be lost, but some of it pass into the slayer's own 
person. If conquered or wounded to death his stoi- 
cism was indomitable; his enemy might see his back 
in flight, but never behold him flinch under torture. ; 
when his finger-nails were plucked out one by one, 
and the raw skull from which his scalp was torn seared 
with live coals, and red-hot gun-barrels thrust into 



THE INDIANS. 



49 



the abdominal cavity after he had been disemboweled, 
he would still sing his death-song and gather breath 
to hurl a last yell of defiance at his enemy as he ex- 
pired. To attain this sort of endurance was the aim 
of all the Indian culture ; it was part of his religion, 
for a distinguished reception in the happy hunting- 
grounds beyond the grave was the promised reward 
of. the resolute warrior and the successful hunter. 
The Indian brave was by this system encouraged to 
set his own personality above everything else. His 
individuality was most conspicuous and pronounced. 
He was haughty, proud, boastful, vain. He bragged 
loudly of his own deeds. He painted and adorned 
his person with the utmost pains and 
in the most gaudy and glaring colors. 
His body was tattooed ; his scalp-lock 
was a study for his ideas in decorative 
art; he daubed his face in white, red, 
and green colors till he vied with Har- 
lequin; and his robes, his leggins, his 
moccasins were beaded and embroid- 
ered in a thousand complicated patterns 
and devices. 

The squaw did this fancy work for her 
lord and master, but she had no time to 
do it for herself. The Indian woman's 
life, as Parkman has said, had no bright 
side. It was a youth of license, an age 
of drudgery. There was not much 
passion, but a great deal of dissolute- 
ness. The Lenape women were no 
more chaste than the men were con- 
tinent. Amours in youth were no ban 
to marriage afterwards. Child-bearing 
was scarcely painful to the woman, and, 
as she alone had charge of her offspring, 
children were no burthen nor obstacle 
to the man. Delicacy and modesty 
could have no existence in the iDromis- 
cuous lodge-life of these savage tribes, 
and the virtue which the male did not 
protect was naturally no treasure to the 
female. " Once a mother,'' says Park- 
man, describing the Hurons, the woman 
" from a wanton became a drudge. In 
March and April she gathered the 
year's supply of firewood. Then came 
sowing, tilling, and harvesting, curing 
fish, dressing skin, making cordage and clothing, pre- 
paring food. On the march it was she who bore the bur- 
den, for, in the words of Champlain, 'their women were 
their mules.' The natural effect followed. In every 
town were shriveled hags, hideous and despised, who in 
vindictiveness, ferocity, and cruelty far exceeded the 
men. To the men fell the task of building the houses 
and making weapons, pipes, and canoes. For the rest, 
their home-life was a life of leisure and amusement. 
The summer and autumn were their seasons of serious 
employment, — of war, hunting, fishing, and trade. . . . 
4 



These pursuits, with their hunting, in which they 
were aided by a wolfish breed of dngs unable to bark, 
consumed the autumn and early winter." With win- 
ter the men were idle, the women more at leisure. 
The festive season ensued, — gambling, smoking, danc- 
ing, feasting to gluttony consumed the vacant hours. 
The Indian was a desperate gambler. He staked his 
all upon a throw ; he stripped himself naked in mid- 
winter to raise the means for another stake. It was a 
common feature in the meagre comedy of this dull 
existence for the young brave who had gone forth gay 
and resplendent in all his bravery and trappings to 
visit his kinsmen in the next village to return after :i 




DELAWARE INDIAN FAMILY. 
[From Campanius' "New Sweden."] 

day or two like a plucked crow, all his finery gone, 
and no leggins nor moccasins even left to protect his 
denuded limbs from frost and snow. 

Indian feasts and dances had more or less of a mys- 
tical and religious character, but the substantial part 
of them, gluttony and wild license, were never neg- 
lected. At the so-called religious feasts indeed glut- 
tony was part of the ritual. Each was expected to 
eat all before him, under penalty of vengeance by the 
special manitou who was to be honored, and prizes 
were offered to the victor who soonest devoured his 



50 



HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA. 



portion. The dances were wild, furious, delirious, 
and intoxicating. At religious dances men and some- 
times women flung off all their clothing ; they shouted 
wild songs, they gesticulated fiercely and contorted 
themselves like dervishes till their glistening hodies 
foamed with sweat. The war-dance and war-songs 
were intended to supply the spark to the tinder of 
enthusiasm and ferocity, and there was a terrible 
vividness in the mimic pantomime of battle and mur- 
der and sudden death, of the tomahawk thrown with 
unerring aim, the knife driven hilt-deep in the vic- 
tim's breast, the scalp waved aloft as if just wrested 
from the head of the slain. The drum, the rattle, ' 
and the Indian flute were heard at these dances, but 
the song was the true accompaniment. It was the 
chorus that directed the dance, and the dancers acted 
its words while their motions followed its rhythm. 
Some of these songs have the true lyric quality. They 
burst from the monotony of the chant which is usual 
to the Indian with a sort of inspiration that the 
savage's excitable nature always responds to. 

The dance was an important ingredient in the 
scanty materia medica of the Indian conjurer and 
medicine-man. He esteemed it above the squaw's 
simple and the warrior's sweat-box or Russian bath. 
That, indeed, was a good thing to cure rheumatism 
and restore suppleness and elasticity to the Indian's 
frame, and the squaw's roots and herbs were wonderful 
coadjuvants when the savage lived so simple and active 
a life in the open air; but the medicine-man could 
not live by these. His profit lay in maintaining the 
general opinion of the efficacy of his rattle and drum, 
his pinches, howls, and dancing. Disease came, in 
the Indian's creed, from the malevolence of spirits, 
and, as the necromancer had power over these, he 
must be able to expel disease likewise. The im- 
agination is so powerful a factor, the mind has such 
unlimited influence over the body in its morbid 
states, that we are quite willing to believe the Indian 
medicine-man, shallow charlatan though he was, a 
far more successful doctor than he usually gets credit 
for being. In fact, the sorcerers were too numerous 
not to have been lucky sometimes. In the Indian 
belief the whole material world swarmed with unseen 
influences and powers that controlled human destinies 
with good and evil spirits, with manitous and exist- 
ences that from dawn till night and from night again 
to dawn were working with dim indefinite agencies 
but untiring restlessness to prevent the obvious prom- 
ises of each person's path in life in some unguessable 
way. Nature was full of sorceries, and each might be 
a conspiracy of some sort against human life, health, 
or happiness. Universal superstition made nameless 
panics universal, and as only sorcerers could deal with 
sorcery, each Indian community harbored a pack of 
conjurers, diviners, medicine-men, who were by turns 
the village magicians and the village doctors. They 
were learned in the legends of the past, and they 
pretended to the lore of the future in order to control 



the faith of the present. Their arts were numerous, 
but the tools of their trade were few and rude, and 
they were too slavishly adherents of tradition ever to 
deviate from the established tricks of that trade. In 
the words of Parkman, " The sorcerer, by charms, 
magic songs, magic feats, and the beating of his drum, 
had power over the spirits and those occult influences 
inherent in animals and inanimate things. He could 
call to him the souls of his enemies. They appeared 
before him in the shape of stones. He chopped and 
bruised them with his hatchet; blood and flesh issued 
forth ; and the intended victim, however distant, lan- 
guished and died. Like the sorcerer of the Middle 
Ages, he made images of those he wished to destroy, 
and muttering incantations, punctured them with an 
awl, whereupon the persons represented sickened 
and pined away." 

This poor conjurer was the only doctor the Indian 
had. His magic was more to him than herbs and 
surgery, and it was his code that if his magic, his 
drum and rattle, his feasts, howls, and contortions 
could only expel the demon, nature would expel the 
disease and the patient was sure to recover. The Al- 
gonquin conjurer was also a haruspex and diviner. He 
watched the flight of birds, interpreted the running 
of water and the flicker of flame. He locked himself 
in a cabinet and communed with unseen spirits, for 
all the world like the most modern and most shame- 
less of our charlatans. He built a low conical lodge 
of poles and hides, immured himself therein for 
hours, beat his drum, sounded his rattle, sang his 
songs, and at last emerged charged with the commu- 
nications the spirits had vouchsafed to him after his 
arduous and awe-inspiring wrestle with them. Still, 
this conjurer was not the priest of even the Indian's 
debased religion. Every man was priest in his own 
right, made his own sacrifices, and propitiated the 
powers to which he yielded deference as suited his 
own pleasure. The Indian was too poor and too hun- 
gry to make many and costly oblations. He sprinkled 
a little tobacco upon the breeze; he immolated a white 
dog, or he burned a scrap of meat to Manitou ; but 
when he made a genuine sacrificial feast he and his 
guests were careful to consume the offering to the last 
fragment in Manitou's name and behalf. The com- 
pleteness of the gormandise was the compliment which 
Manitou was thought to appreciate most, and thus 
piety became its own reward. Feasts of this sort 
would of course be followed by dreams in proportion 
to the sumptuousness of the vicarious offering, and 
these dreams the conjurer made his profit by inter- 
preting. 

If the Indian was not extravagant in his offerings to 
Manitou, he was yet scrupulously and invariably po- 
lite in all his dealings with him. He slew the bear 
and the deer with a sententious courtesy, and was pro- 
fuse in apologies and civilities to the spirit of every 
victim of his skill in the chase, and even upon the 
war-path. This was a sincere proceeding for one so 



THE INDIANS. 



51 



deeply imbued with the notion that the entire mate- 
rial world was sentient and intelligent, and that every 
object and being in nature had a share in ruling hu- 
man destinies. All things had souls, and the souls of 
all things could hear man's soul while incapable of 
responding to it. They were not powerless because 
dumb ; they were none the less to be propitiated 
because their reconnoissance was inaudible. The uni- 
verse quivered throughout with mystery, and the mys- 
terious was synonymous, in the Indian's creed, with 
the divine. Hence in every undertaking the Amer- 
ican savage made a factitious offering of first fruits. 
He even propitiated the fishing-nets he had just made 
with his own hands, and secured a good haul by wed- 
ding the nets to the virgins of his tribe. Each Indian 
had besides his own particular manitou, and the man- 
hood vigil of the young warrior before he went upon 
his first hunt or his first war-path was a propitiatory 
acknowledgment made to this spiritual inward guide, 
friend, and monitor. The object that appeared to 
him in his fasting dreams during this vigil became 
his totem, his fetish, the "medicine'' which he must 
henceforth wear about his person. 

Sooth to say, however, the Indian did not save all 
his urbanity for the spirits and the manitou. The 
elaborate courtesy which he bestowed upon the bear 
he had just killed was ihe distinguishing trait of all 
his daily intercourse with his neighbor and his guest. 
Politeness, deference, respect for the persons and feel- 
ings of others constituted the social law of the Indian, 
and stood him instead of municipal and police ordi- 
nance. The consequence was that these wild and in- 
tractable barbarians were able to live together har- 
moniously even in large communities. Gregarious as 
the buffalo, the Indian was, as Parkman has said, " in 
certain external aspects, the most pliant and complais- 
ant of mankind." He had on all occasions that docile 
acquiescence in the whims and oddities of strangers 
which is the quintessence of politeness. The Indian of 
whom Franklin wrote illustrates this spirit cleverly. 
The missionary had told him how Adam fell, to which 
he listened with grave assent, telling, in his turn, the 
Indian fable of the origin of maize and tobacco. The 
missionary repudiated the story with contempt, where- 
upon the Indian said, "My brother, it seems your 
friends have not done you justice in your education. 
They have not well instructed you in the rules of 
common civility. You see that we, who understand 
and practice those rules, believe all your stories. "Why 
do you refuse to believe ours?" An Indian who re- 
sented being stared at and gaped at by the town mob 
complained to his interpreter. " We have," said he, 
" as much curiosity as your people, and when you come 
into our towns we wish for opportunities of looking at 
you ; but for this purpose we hide ourselves behind 
bushes where you are to pass, and never intrude our- 
selves into your company.'' The Jesuit priests, when 
first among the Indians in Canada, fancied they were 
making converts at once of the entire population, but 



afterwards found out that they had mistaken for con- 
viction what was simple courtesy, unwillingness to 
deny and contradict. Instinctive self-control helped 
the Indian to maintain this courteous exterior upon 
all occasions. The self-respect of the Indian, one of 
his strongest qualities, made him considerate and re- 
spectful to the feelings of others. His code of honor 
was rigid to punctiliousness, and he exacted the same 
deference to himself which he so willingly yielded 
to others. He liked popularity, and made sacrifices 
to secure it. He was hospitable to a fault, and really 
charitable and generous to distress and suffering. 
The village hags united to supply the fresh-wedded 
bride's wood-pile; the whole people turned out to 
rebuild a lodge if any one had lost his by flood or fire. 
No man, no matter what his condition, could enter 
the Indian's wigwam and seat himself but what food 
would at once be placed before him, if food there was. 
They were sociable, fond of visiting, and jocose in 
their sociability. The story-teller always had a high 
seat at their feasts. Said the Jesuit Father Brebeuf, 
whom the Iroquois murdered with such atrocious 
tortures, " They have a gentleness and an affability 
as it were incredible in savages; they are not easily 
offended; . . they keep up their excellent kind re- 
lations one with another by frequent interchange of 
visits, by their mutual helpfulness to the sick and ail- 
ing, and by their feasts and family alliances. They 
are less in their own wigwams than in those of their 
friends. If they have some tidbit or other at once 
they make a feast of it for their friends, and never 
think of eating it without company." 

The political organization of each Indian nation, 
so far as it has been observed, is identical in the es- 
sential with that of every other Indian nation. The 
race or nation was a confederacy of tribes of contigu- 
ous territory and common descent ; each tribe was 
divided into clans, and each clan into families. The 
nation was governed by chiefs, whose office was he- 
reditary in the female line of descent ; the power of 
the chiefs was great, but it was through respect and 
deference to their opinions rather than submission to 
their authority, for their influence was almost entirely 
advisory and persuasive. " There were two principal 
chiefs, one for war and one for peace ; there were 
chiefs assigned to special national functions ; there 
were numerous other chiefs, equal in rank, but very 
unequal in influence, since the measure of their influ- 
ence depended on the measure of their personal abil- 
ity ; each nation of the confederacy had a separate 
organization, but at certain periods grand councils of 
the united nations were held, at which were present 
not chiefs only, but also a great concourse of the 
people ; and at these and other councils the chiefs 
and principal men voted on proposed measures by 
means of small sticks or reeds, the opinion of the 
majority ruling." 1 



Parkman, " Jesuits in America.' 



52 



HISTORY OP PHILADELPHIA. 



The power of chiefs and councils, great in degree, 
was limited in extent. There were few things for it 
to be exercised upon in that savage state where indi- 
viduals were so free. Now and then a witch or a 
traitor or obnoxious person was ordered to be mur- 
dered by the council in secret session. But there was 
no property for the law-making proclivity to exercise 
itself upon, and there could not be much stealing 
without property. In fact, the Indians never robbed 
or stole except away from home. Crimes against the 
person were individual matters, and redressed by in- 
dividual methods. This was even the case with mur- 
der. If murderer and victim belonged to the same 
clan, it was looked upon as a family quarrel, to be 
settled by the immediate kin. As a rule, public 
opinion compelled the acceptance of the atonement 
in lieu of bloodshed. If the murderer and victim 
were of different clans, the whole tribe went to work 
to prevent a feud from arising and leading to more 
bloodshed. Every effort was made to get the victim's 
clan to accept the atonement offering. Thirty pres- 
ents was the price of a man's life, forty for a woman. 
If the victim belonged to a foreign tribe, the danger 
of war led to council meetings, formal embassies, and 
extensive making of actual and symbolical presents. 

A strange race the Indians were, and their institu- 
tions, now so rapidly disappearing, are worthy of close 
and careful study. If this generation shall not profit 
by the vestiges of Indian antiquities still remaining 
to secure a, knowledge of their institutions and the 
languages of the people who observed them, nothing 
will be left for the inquiring spirits of the next age. 
No matter whether the race remains or not, the aborig- 
inal American Indian, such as he appeared to Penn and 
to Capt. Smith, to Campanius and De Laet and the 
Jesuit Fathers, will no longer be found in this con- 
tinent. It should be our pleasure, as it is our duty, 
to try to restore the fading picture of Indian life in 
the spirit of Philip Freneau's graceful poem on " The 
Old Indian Burying-Ground :" 

" Tlie Indian, when from life released, 
Again is seated with his friends, 
And shares again the joyous feast. 

" His imag'd birds, and painted bowl, 
And ven'son for a journey dress'd, 
Bespeak the nature of the soul, 
Activity, that wants no rest. . . . 

" By midnight moons, o'er moistening dews, 
In vestments for the chase array'd, 
The hunter still the deer pursues, 
The hunter and the deer — a 6hade." 



CHAPTER IV. 

DISCOVERY AND OCCUPATION OF THE HUDSON AM) 
DELAWARE RIVERS BY THE DUTCH. 

There is no ground for reasonable doubt that John 
and Sebastian Cabot, natives of Venice, probably 
sailors almost from birth, but doing business in Bris- 



tol, England, at the time of their commission under 
King Henry VII., were the first navigators, at least 
of historic times, to discover the actual coast-line of 
the North American continent, along which they 
sailed from Newfoundland to the parallel of Gibraltar, 
that is to say to about the latitude of Cape Hatteras. 
John Cabot, the senior of these sailors and traders, 
excited by the news of the great discovery made by 
Christopher Columbus, and with the certainty thus 
warranted of reaching land by sailing westward, ob- 
tained a commission under the great seal of England 
from King Henry VII., dated March 5, 1496, author- 
izing the navigator and his three sons, or either of 
them, their heirs or their deputies, to sail into the 
Eastern, Western, or Northern seas, with a fleet of 
fiveships, at their own expense, in search of unknown 
lands, islands, or provinces ; to plant the banner of 
England on these when found, and possess and oc- 
cupy them as vassals of the English crown. The pro- 
vision that the explorers should voyage at their own 
expense was characteristic of the thrifty monarch, 
but the commission of a king at that day was the 
only safeguard the navigator had to protect him from 
suspicions of piracy, and the exclusive right of fre- 
quenting and trading to the new countries when found 
was a privilege for which nations were soon to con- 
tend. Cabot, with his son Sebastian, came in sight 
of the mainland, in the region of Labrador, on June 
24, 1497, fourteen months before Columbus, on his 
third voyage, had reached the continent, and two 
years before Amerigo Vespucci sailed from the Cana- 
ries. 1 It is not so certain that Verazzano, also an 
Italian, discovered the bay of New York in a voyage 
made by him in 1506 from the Carolinas northward, 
under the commission- of King Francis I. of France. 2 
It is certain that the first practical discovery of the 
Delaware Bay and River and of the New York Bay 
and Hudson River was made in 1609, by Henry 
Hudson, an English navigator in the service of the 
Dutch East India Company, whose title to immor- 
tality seems to be assured by the fact that one of the 
largest bays and one of the noblest rivers in the world 



1 Bancroft, vol. i. Hakluyt, Divers Voyages. Brodhead, Hist. New 
York. The account of Cabot's voyage is given by Peter Martyr. 

2 The account of Verazzauo's voyage is contained in a letter from the 
navigator to King Francis, dated July S, 1524, describing what he saw 
and did and the strange peoplo he encountered. This letter is given to 
the world first by the historian Ramusio, a Venetian, who also, by in- 
cluding this in his collection, made himself responsible for the voyages 
of Cadamosto, the travels of Amerigo Vespucci, and of Marco Polo, all 
of which first saw the world in this most interesting collection. The 
three volumes of Ramusio also contain the apocryphal voyages of the 
brothers Zcni beyond the north of Scotland in 1400, the works of the 
credulous Ovicdo, and the earliest histories of the conquests made by 
Cortes and Pifcarro. They are capital reading, but, as the accurate Hal- 
lam observes, their subject matter "could as yet only be obtained orally 
from Spanish and Portuguese sailors or adventurers, and was such as their 
falsehood and blundering would impart. 11 Ramusio is also convicted of 
having garbled Marco Polo's narrative by interpolations of his own 
Judge Henry C. Murphy, of the Long Island Historical Society, a very 
competent geographical critic, is disposed to believe that the entire letter 
of Verazzano to King Francis I. is spurious. 



SETTLEMENTS ON THE DELAWARE. 



53 



equally bear his name and are admitted to have been 
■discovered by him. The discovery of Delaware Bay 
and River was made, according to the journal kept 
by Robert Jewett (or Juet), the first officer of Hud- 
son's ship, on Aug. 28, 1609 (new style), and on this 
discovery the Dutch founded their claim to the 
countries binding upon and adjacent to the North 
(Hudson) and the South (Delaware) Rivers. 1 

The accounts of Hudson's third voyage and his 
discovery of the North and South Rivers are too ac- 
curate, circumstantial, and satisfactory to allow of any 
question in regard to them. Hudson's journal as well 
as that of Robert Juet are preserved in Purchas' Pil- 




1 We know surprisingly little of Henry Hudson. He ie said to have 
been the personal friend of Capt. John Smith, the founder of Virginia, 
and it is probable that he was of the family of that Henry Hudson who, 
in 1554, was one of the original incorporators of the English Muscovy 
Company. This man's son, Christopher, supposed to have been the 
father of the great navigator, was aB early as 1560 and up to 1601 the 
factor and agent on the spot of the London Company trading to Russia, 
and it seems likely that the younger Hudson, from his familiarity with 
Arctic navigation, and his daring pertinacity in attempting to invade 
the ice-bound northern wastes, may have served his apprenticeship as a 
navigator in tradins, nn behalf the Muscovy Company, from Bristol to 

Russia, as was then often 
done through the North 
Channel, and round the 
Hebrides, Orkneys, 'Shet- 
lands, and North Cape to 
the White Sea and Arch- 
angel. At any rate when 
Hudson makes his first 
picturesque appearance 
before us, in the summer 
of 1607, in the Church 
of St. Ethelburge, Bish- 
opsgate Street, London, 
where he and his crew 
are present to partake of 
the Holy Sacrament to- 
gether, it is preparatory 
to a voyage in the ser- 
vice of the newly-or- 
ganized "London Com- 
pany," in Jewett's own words, " for to discover a passage by the North 
Pole to Japan and China." The navigator was at that time a middle-aged 
man, experienced and trusted. Hudson reached Spitzbergen,and there 
the ice forced him back. He repeated next year the attempt to reach 
Asia by crossing directly over the Pole, and again he failed after having 
reached Nova Zembla. The London Company now became disheart- 
ened, and Hudson at once transferred his services to the Dutch, who 
were then also eagerly seeking a northern route to Asia, and preparing 
under the ardent urgings of Usselincx (of whom more will be said 
presently) to establish a West India Company. The Amsterdam direc- 
tors of the Dutch East India Company put him in command of a yacht 
or vlie-boat, the "Half-Moon"' (the "yagt 'Halve-Maan'"), of forty 
"lasts" or eighty tons burden, and bade him continue to search for a 
route to the Eastern seas such as the Spaniards and Portuguese could 
not obstruct. It was on hU third voyage when, beaten back by the ice 
from the Greenland seas, he sailed as far south as the capes of the 
Chesapeake, and discovered Delaware Bay and Hudson River. In his 
fourth voyage he returned again to the service of England, discovered 
and entered Hudson's Bay, wintered there, and in the spring, having 
angered his crew by harshness and by persisting in going westward, was 
cast adrift by them in a small boat and left, with his son, to perish in the 
ice on the desolate border of the bay which bears his name. He was never 
heard of afterward. For further particulars of this stern, bold, and in- 
telligent navigator, who was a man full of spirit, energy, and well-defined 
purpose, the reader may consult Pnrchas, Hakluyt, and the monographs 
■of Hon. H.C. Murphy, Dr. Asher, Gen. John M. Bead, Jr., and Rev. B.F. 
de Costa. 



HENUY HUDSON. 



grims, and Juet has given not only the courses and 
distances sailed on the coast, but the various depths 
of water obtained by soundings off the bars and with- 
in the capes of the two bays. Juet's log-book of Aug. 
28, 1609, has indeed been tested by actual soundings 
and sailing distances, and is found to be so accurate 
to this day that his route can be minutely followed. 
The English early gave the name of Delaware Bay 
and River to the South River of the Dutch, upon the 
pretext that it was discovered by Lord de la Warr in 
his voyage to Virginia in 1610. Mr. Brodhead and 
other writers, however, have plainly shown that Lord 
La Warr never saw Delaware Bay, and that the name 
Cape La Warr was given to Cape May by the roister- 
ing Capt. Samuel Argalls, of Lord Somers' squadron, 
who, being separated from his commander in a fog off 
the Bermudas, in that voyage the narration of which 
is supposed to have given Shakspeare his theme for 
the Tempest, was carried by a cyclone as far north as 
Cape Cod, and descending the coast again to Virginia, 
sighted the cape in question and gave his lordship's 
name to it. 2 The above few sentences embody all 
that is certainly inown in regard to the discovery of 
Delaware Bay and River. If we let loose the pen to 
conjecture and to debatable views and statements, 
there is ground for very wide discussion, for which, 
however, there is no room in a volume like this. 3 



2 See several notes in the text and appendices of Brodhead's History 
of the State of New York, vol. i. 

3 For i nstance, Van Materen, one of the early historians of the Nether- 
lands, assumes that the detention of Hudson in England on his return 
from his third voyage was because the English wanted time to prepare 
ships to look up and take possession of the newly discovered rivers. But 
Van Materen himself says at the same time of Hudson that, " as he was 
about to sail with his ship and crew [from Dartmouth] to go and report the 
results of his voyage, he was arrested in England and commanded not to 
depart, but that he must enter the service of his country, which command 
was also extended to the other English who were in the vessel." On 15th 
December, 1644, the (Dutch) Chamber of Accounts of the West India 
Company presented a "Report and Advice" to the effect that " New 
Netherland, Btretching from the South River, situated in thirty-eight and 
a half degrees, to Cape Malabarre, in the latitude of forty-one and a half 
degrees, was first visited by the inhabitants of this country in the year 
1598, and especially by those of the Greenland Company, but without 
making fixed habitations and only as a refuge in winter." Nearly all 
the historians of New York accept this apocryphal statement, which Mr. 
Brodhead guardedly says " needs confirmation ." In fact, the picturesque 
Indian legends so distinctly confided to Heckewelder prove that Hud- 
son and his crew were the first white men ever remembered to have been 
seen by the Indians on the Hudson. A stranger story jb that of Sir 
Edmund Ployden, or Plowdeu, Earl Palatinate of New Albion, who, by 
English Charter of 1G32, was granted by indefinite description a tract 
of land between Cape Cod and Cape May, extending westward to some 
untraceable boundary. This tract, which included New Jersey, Dela- 
ware, part of Maryland, and perhaps of Pennsylvania, was divided, 
according to "Beauchamp Plantagenet" in his pamphlet, into Lord- 
ships and other great divisions. Yet before the Dutch came to estab- 
lished settlements, Plowden and his colouists had disappeared. Each 
government founded its claim to the territory between thirty-eight 
and forty-one degrees north latitude. In April, 1632, Governor Peter 

j Minuet, recalled in disgrace from the New Netherlands, was driven 
J by a storm into Plymouth, England. He and his staff were detained 

upon a charge of illegally trading with the Indians of Virginia. A 
| diplomatic correspondence immediately ensued between the two gov- 
| ernments, in which King Charles I. declined to release Minuet until he 
! had looked into the matter further, as he was " not quite sure what his 

rights were." Then was the time, if ever, for the claim of 1598 to be pul 



54 



HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA. 



Those who wish to pursue these subjects minutely 
will find ample details in the historical collections of 
Pennsylvania, New York, Delaware, New Jersey, and 
Maryland. They will not, however, after all discover 
much to disturb the general conclusion that the Dutch 
claim to the New Netherlands rests upon discovery 
and possession taken by Henry Hudson in 1609 ; the 
English claim to general discovery by the Cabots in 
1497-98. 

The Dutch did not immediately profit to any great 
extent by the magnificent discoveries made for them 
and in their name by Henry Hudson. The report 
upon the Hudson River must indeed have attracted 
great attention when received at home, but the navi- 
gator merely said of the Zuydt (South or Delaware) 
River, 1 that he found the land to "trend away towards 
the northwest, with a great bay and rivers, but the 
bay was shoal," and dangerous by reason of sand- 
bars. This sort of character would not tend to divert 
navigators or sea traders in that direction. There 
were as yet, for reasons which will presently appear, 
no attempts at colonization either on the North or 
the South River. But the Dutch, born traders, were 
fully acquainted with the value of the fur trade 
through their traffic with Russia, frequently sending 
as many as sixty to eighty ships a year to Archangel, 
the czar having made the fur trade practically free. 
Hudson had revealed to these shrewd traders what 
a wealth of cheap furs was to be obtained from the 
Indians on the river bearing his name, and his old 
vessel, the "Half-Moon,'' was no sooner released and 
restored to her owners, in 1610, than she was sent 
back to the North River with a trading cargo, and 
returned with a profitable cargo of furs. In 1611, 
Hendrick Christiaensen, of Cleves, near Niemguen, 
Holland, West India trader, and Adrian Block, of 
Amsterdam, chartered a ship, in company with the 
Schipper Rysar, and made a successful voyage to the 
Manhattans and the "great river of the mountains," 
returning with furs, and bringing also two sons of 
chiefs with them, whom they kindly christened " Val- 
entine and Orson." These young savages, and the 
cheap and abundant furs of their native land, at- 
tracted public attention in Holland to the newly 
discovered territories. A memorial on the subject 
was presented to the Provincial States of Holland 



forward on the one side, and those of Argall and Plowden and Lord de la 
Warr on the other. But the Dutch simply rested on Hudson's discovery 
in 1G09, the return of some of their people in 1610, a specific trading 
charter in 1614, and permanent occupancy by the Dutch West India 
Company in 1623. Tho claims of King Charles, on the other hand, 
though formulated by the skillful hand of Sir Edward Coke himself, 
rested entirely upon the discovery of America by Onbot and the New 
England and Virginia patents of King James I. 

1 Also variously called by the IndiaD names of Poutaxat, Makiri- 
skitton, Makarish-Kiskeu, and Lenape Wihittuck, while Heylin, in his 
Cosmography, bravely gives it the further name of Arasapha. When it 
became better known, the Dutch sometimes called it the Nassau, Prince 
Hendrick's or Prince Charles' River; and the Swedes, New Swedeland 
stream. The earliest settlers sometimes styled it New Port May and 
Godyn's Bay. 



and West Friesland by several merchants and in- 
habitants of the United Provinces, and "it was judged 
of sufficient consequence to be formally communicated 
to the cities of Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Hoorn, and 
Enckhuysen." 2 In 1612, Christiaensen and Block, 
with the encouragement and material aid of leading 
and enterprising merchants, fitted out two vessels, 
the " Fortune" and the " Tiger," and sailed again to 
the Manhattans, to trade along the Hudson as before. 
Other merchants joined in these profitable ventures, 
and in 1613 the " Little Fox," under command of 
John De Witt, and the "Nightingale," under Thys 
Volkertsen, were sent out from Amsterdam, while 
the owners of the ship " Fortune," of Hoorn, sent 
out their vessel under charge of Oapt. Cornells Jacob- 
sen May, or Mey. Block's vessel, the " Tiger," was 
burnt at Manhattan Island just as he was about to 
return to Holland, but the undaunted mariner built 
a hut on shore on Manhattan Island, and spent the- 
winter of 1613-14 in constructing a yacht of sixteen 
tons, which he appropriately named the Onrust, or 
"Restless." In the spring of 1614, when Block's 
little yacht was ready for service, the companion 
vessels of the previous year, as above enumerated, 
were coming out for their second voyage. But they 
came under new auspices, for the States General had 
considered and acted upon the memorials and peti- 
tions spoken of above, passing an ordinance 3 de- 
claring that as it was " honorable, useful, and profit- 
able" that the people of the Netherlands should be 
encouraged to adventure themselves in discovering 
unknown countries, and for the purpose of making 
the inducement " free and common to every one of 
the inhabitants," it was granted and conceded that 
"whoever shall from this time forward discover any 
new passages, havens, lands, or plaees, shall have the 
exclusive right of navigating to the same for four 
voyages." Reports of discoveries were to be made 
to the States General within fourteen days after the 
return of vessels to port, and where the discoveries 
were simultaneously made by different parties, the 
rights acquired under them were to be enjoyed in 
common. 

When the spring voyaging began, Christiaensen 
pushed up the Hudson and erected a trading-post 
and block-house on Castle Island, just below where 
Albany now stands. Block, with the " Onrust," ex- 
plored Long Island Sound, and many rivers and in- 
lets to the eastward, naming Rhode (Roode) Island 
and giving his own name to Block Island. Mey, on 
the contrary, sailed immediately southward, charted 
the coast from Sandy Hook to the Delaware, and en- 
tering thatbay gave his surname, May, to the northern 
cape, his Christian name, Cornelis, to the southern 
cape opposite, and to the southern cape facing the 
ocean he gave the name of Hinlopen, the name of a 



' Brodhead, i. p. 46. N. T. Hist. Coll., 2d series, ii. 35S. 
3 27th March, 1614. 



SETTLEMENTS ON THE DELAWARE. 



55 



town in Friesland. There is no evidence that May 
attempted to change the name of the Delaware Bay 
and River from that given it by the Dutch, the South 
River, or that he landed at any point. 1 

All the vessels of the trading squadron returned 
early in the fall to Holland, except the " Onrust," 
which remained at Manhattan under the command 
of Cornelis Hendricksen. Block, who no more 
visited our coasts, returned in his old companion's 
ship, the "Fortune," Capt. Hendrick Christiaen- 
sen, to Holland. There the navigators and their as- 
sociated merchants and owners formed a company, 
drew a chart and report of their several discoveries, 
and proceeded to the Hague to claim a concession 
under the ordinance of March 27, 1614. They spread 
their "figurative map" upon the council table in the 
presence of the twelve mighty lords of the States 
General, presided over by John van Olden Barneveldt, 
the "Advocate" of Holland, told their tale of adven- 
ture, discovery, loss, and gain, and claimed the mon- 
opoly which was theirs by right under the ordinance. 
It was conceded at once, and a special charter to them 
of exclusive privilege to trade for four voyages in the 
region they had explored was drawn up and signed 
in their presence. The penalty for infringing upon 
this charter was a fine of fifty thousand Netherland 
ducats for the benefit of the grantees. The territory 
covered by the charter was all the land between New 
France, as the French possessions in Canada were 
called, and Virginia, and the grantees were given three 
years in which to make the four voyages. This char- 
ter, besides conferring a valuable franchise tempora- 
rily upon the grantees, in effect asserted that the 
Dutch territory of the New Netherlands embraced all 
the territory and coast line of North America from 
the fortieth to the forty-fifth parallel. Nor did any 
of King James' charters negative this pretension, for 
they expressly excepted any lands settled or occupied 
by the subjects of any European sovereign or State. 

While the new company were spreading their 
"figurative map" before the Council at the Hague, 
the little yacht " Onrust," on the other side of the 
ocean, now under the command of the enterprising 
Capt. Hendricksen, was making the first actual ex- 
ploration of the Delaware Bay and River. Hendrick- 
.-.en landed at several places, took soundings, drew 
charts, and discovered the contour of the bay and the 



1 Some romantic circumstances have gathered about the fact of the 
Delaware Bay and River and ttie State of Delaware deriving their name 
from Lord de la Warr. It has been said that he died off the capes of 
Delaware on his homo voyage, that he was poisoned, etc. The better- 
received opinion, however, is that he was alive in 1618, and then died 
either at his seat in England or when about to re-embark for Virginia. 
He was only Lord de la Warr by courtesy, being actually Sir Thomas 
West, third son of Lord de la Warr. He married in Virginia, his wife 
being a daughter of Sir Thomas Shirley, from whom the old Virginia es- 
tate of that name derives its title. West Point, in New York, gets its 
name from him. The family of the Sackville- Wests, owners of the 
stately manor-house of Knole, which in Quei J n Elizabeth's day belonged 
to the Sackvilles, are the stock from whom sprung the present British 
Minister at Washington, Hon. Lionel Sackville- West. 



capabilities of the river. While landing at Christi- 
ana Creek a strange thing happened. Hendricksen's 
party encountered a band of Minqua Indians and 
redeemed from captivity three white men, who in the 
spring of the year 1616 had left Fort Nassau, on 
Castle Island, at the head of navigation on the North 
River, and strayed into the wilderness and forest in 
which the Mohawks and Lenni Lenape had their 
wondrous hunting-grounds. These men had wan- 
dered up the Mohawk Valley, crossed the dividing 
ridge into the Delaware Valley, and then descended 
that stream, thus being the first white men who ever 
trod the soil of Pennsylvania. 2 On Aug. 19, 1616, 
Hendricksen, having returned to Holland, laid his 
claim for extensive trading privileges before the 
States General, asserting that "he hath discovered 
for his aforesaid masters and directors certain lands, 
a bay, and three rivers, situate between thirty-eight 
and forty degrees, and did there trade with the in- 
habitants, said trade consisting of sables, furs, robes, 
and other skins. He hath found the said country 
full of trees, to wit : oak, hickory, and pines, which 
trees were in some places covered with vines. He 
hath seen in said country bucks and doe, turkeys and 
partridges. He hath found the climate of said coun- 
try very temperate, judging it to be as temperate as 
this country (Holland)." Hendricksen's claim, how- 
ever, was not granted, and in January, 1618, the 
general ordinance granting exclusive trading privi- 
leges expired by limitation. An entirely new policy 
was in contemplation by the Netherlands govern- 
ment." 3 

This new policy looked to stepping at once from 
simple trading in the New Netherlands to colonization 
by means of a West Indies Company. Its develop- 
ment and its fluctuations during many years, in 
obedience to the ups and downs of political agitation 
in the Netherlands, are described graphically in the 
brilliant pages of Mrs. Martha J. Lamb's just pub- 
lished History of New York, but at too great length 
to be followed here. Holland, as Brodhead has de- 
scribed it, was the greatest trading country at this 
time. Amsterdam was the Venice of the North, and 
the Dutch pushed their commerce into every zone. 
But the Netherlanders were more than this. They 
were ardent and even fanatical politicians. They 



2 Armor's Lives of the Governors of Pennsylvania, pages 17 and 20. 
The fact of this meeting is not disputed. Most authorities say, however, 
that the three men were not whites but Indians, employes of the trad- 
ing-post on Castle Island. 

3 Another historic doubt clouds this voyage of Hendricksen. It migh t 
be supposed that this" third river" must be the Schuylkill, and that l.e 
was thus the first white man to gaze upon the site of Philadelphia. But 
a writer so accomplished as Dr. George Smith, historian of Delaware 
County, says that it cannot be fairly inferred that the voyage of the 
"Restless" was extended so far inland even as the mouth of the Dela- 
ware Biver.iiud that the original "Carte figurative" attached to the 
memorial of his employers proves this. He suggests that if any new 
and original information was contributed to the States General by Hon. 
dricksen, it was derived not from his own exploration, but from the 
statements of the three rescued traders from Fort Nassau. 



56 



HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA. 



had just conquered their freedom from the Spaniards, 
whom they hated bitterly, and proclaimed the repub- 
lic which had enabled them to maintain the bitter 
struggle, and which consequently they devotedly 
loved. Up to 1606 they had been completely united 
both in foreign and domestic policy, and in that year 
they had been about to found a West Indies Company, 
not merely for trade, but to carry on the war with 
Spain more actively and relentlessly. When Vir- 
ginia was occupied by the London Company in 1608, 
they had proposed to the British government to join 
them in a common foreign and trading policy, mean- 
ing, of course, to war more energetically still upon 
Spanish commerce. But the British coolly declined, 
saying that they feared " that in case of joining, if it 
be upon equal terms, the art and industry of their 
people will wear out ours." This suggestion of over- 
reaching was not forgotten by the Dutch. In 1620, 
when Robinson, Brewster, and their large congrega- 
tion of Puritans, exiles in Leyden and other parts of 
the Netherlands for twelve years, had determined to 
emigrate to America, and had been disappointed in 
theirnegotiations with both the Virginia colony and the 
Plymouth Company, they applied to the Netherlands 
through the Amsterdam merchants for leave to settle 
on the North River, Robinson offering to go and take 
. four hundred families with him, provided they were 
ussured of protection. " They desired to go to New 
Netherlands,'' said Robinson, "to plant there the 
true Christian and pure religion, to convert the sav- 
ages of those countries to the true knowledge and 
understanding of the Christian faith, and through 
the grace of the Lord and to the glory of the Neth- 
erlands government, to colonize and establish a new 
empire there under the order and command" of the 
Prince of Orange and the High Mighty Lords States 
General. 1 The Amsterdam Company submitted the 
proposition to the Hague with their approval, hav- 
ing made at the same time " large offers" of free trans- 
portation, stock, etc., to the Puritans. The Prince 
of Orange, the stadtholder, referred the memorial 
to the States General, and that body, after careful 
deliberation, resolved peremptorily to reject the 
offer of the Puritans. But for this action there might 
have been no Plymouth Rock, and the whole course 
of American history might have been changed. 

The truce of the Netherlands with Spain, which 
was negotiated in 1609, to last twelve years, was in 
lieu of a permanent treaty of peace. Philip II. con- 
sented to" the independence of the Netherlands, but 
would not consent to give them free trade in the East 
Indies. The Netherlands would not treat finally 
without a recognition of their commercial freedom, 
and so a truce was the compromise agreed upon. The 
treaty was the work of Grotius and Barneveldt, sup- 
ported by James I. of England and Henry IV. of 
France. Its negotiation had the effect to destroy the 



1 Brodlifnil, i. 1-M. 



project for a West India Company, and on this and 
other grounds was opposed bitterly by the " stal- 
wart" party of the day in the Netherlands, headed by 
William Usselincx, a merchant of Antwerp, who had 
spent many years in Spain, the Azores, and other 
Catholic countries, for which he seemed to have a 
deep personal hatred, and by Plancius, Linschoten, 
and other leading scholars and merchants, who com- 
posed a distinctive " war party," and were eager to 
resort to every means to injure and humble their 
haughty and arrogant enemy. This party was 
strengthened by the fierce temper of religious contro- 
versy. The Calvinists and Puritans were in bitter 
antagonism to the Arminians, who controlled the 
State. It was an old controversy, old as the days of 
Augustine and Pelagius, and it was fought over again 
in Holland. Finally, in 1619, the Reformers carried 
everything before them in the Synod of Dort, the 
Arminians were put down, and Barneveldt, in his 
seventy-second year, was beheaded as a traitor. 

The charter of the Amsterdam merchants for trade 
with the Netherlands had expired, the ordinance 
under which the concessions were granted had also 
ceased, Usselincx and his party and their policy were 
triumphant, and there were many reasons why the 
long-suspended project for a West India Company 
should be carried through without further delay. 
The Virginians began to look with concern at the 
presence of the Dutch upon the Zuydt or South River, 
and indeed had already sent one abortive expedition 
against them. 

The twelve-year truce with Spain expired in the 
spring of 1621, and the United Provinces knew that 
the old struggle must soon be renewed. The English 
government was preparing to remonstrate more or 
less vigorously against the expansion of the Nether- 
lands colonies both on the South River and on the 
New England side. The time was ripe for the con- 
summation of the great scheme of Usselincx, which 
indeed looked to a vast privateering war against 
Spain, in connection with the permanent plantation 
of the New Netherlands. On the 3d of June, 1621, 
accordingly, the States General, under their great 
seal, granted a formal patent incorporating the West 
India Company for the encouragement of that for- 
eign trade and navigation upon which it was assumed 
the welfare and happiness of the United Provinces 
mainly depended. This charter gave to the West 
India Company for the period of twenty-four years 
the exclusive monopoly of trade and navigation to 
the coasts of Africa, between the Cape of Good Hope 
and the Tropic of Cancer, and to the coasts of America 
and the West Indies, between the Straits of Magellan 
and Newfoundland. The company was invested with 
enormous powers. In the language of Brodhead, it 
might make in the name of the States General 
" contracts and alliances with the princes and natives 
of the countries comprehended within the limits of 
its charter, build forts, appoint and discharge gov- 



SETTLEMENTS ON THE DELAWARE. 



57 



ernors, soldiers, and public officers, administer justice, 
and promote trade. It was bound to advance the 
peopling of these fruitful and unsettled parts, and do 
all that the service of those countries and the profit 
and increase of trade shall require." The States 
General had a sort of general supervision, with the 
privilege of confirming the appointment of superior 
officers, but no other powers over it. The govern- 
ment of the company was vested in five boards of 
managers, — one at Amsterdam, managing four-ninths 
of the whole ; one at Middleburg, in Zealand, man- 
aging two-ninths ; one at Dordrecht, on the Maese, 
managing one-ninth ; one in North Holland, one- 
ninth ; and one in Friesland and Groningen, one- 
ninth. The general executive power for all purposes, 
the power to declare war only being reserved for the 
approval of the States, was confided to a board of 
nineteen delegates, of whom eight were to come from 
the Amsterdam chamber, and the rest from the other 
chambers in proportion to their shares, except that 
the States General had one delegate. The States 
were pledged to defend the company against all 
comers, to advance to it a million guilders in money, 
and give it for its assistance sixteen ships of war of 
three hundred tons each, and four yachts of eighty 
tons, fully equipped. This fleet was to be main- 
tained, manned, and supported by the company, 
which besides was to provide an equal number of 
vessels on its own part, the whole to be under the 
command of an admiral selected by the States Gen- 
eral. Any inhabitant of the Netherlands or of other 
countries might become a, stockholder during 1621, 
but after that year the subscription books were to be 
closed, and no new members admitted. Colonization 
was one object of this great monopoly, but what its 
chiefs looked to principally for profit was a vast 
system of legalized piracy against the commerce of 
Spain and Portugal in Africa and America. The 
company was not finally organized under the charter 
until June, 1623, when the subscription books were 
closed. 

In the interval between the lapse of the old United 
Company and the completion of the charter of the 
new monopoly, several ships were sent on trading 
ventures of a more or less private character to the 
North and South Eivers in the New Netherlands, 
among them vessels which had visited those regions 
before. King James I. having granted the charter 
of the Plymouth Company, complaints began to be 
heard about Dutch intrusions. Sir Samuel Argall, 
who is represented in the curious Plantagenet pam- 
phlet as having forced a Dutch governor in Manhat- 
tan to yield allegiance to the British king in 1613, is 
found in 1621 as complaining, in a memorial signed 
by him, Sir Ferdinando Georges, the Earl of Arun- 
del, and Capt. John Mason, against the " Dutch in- 
truders," who are represented as having only settled 
on the Hudson in 1620. This was claimed by the 
Plymouth Company as proof of the British king's 



title to the whole country, jure primal occupationis. 
This led to a protest, in December, 1621, by the Brit- 
ish government, through Sir Dudley Carleton, ambas- 
sador at the Hague. The States professed ignorance, 
and promised to make inquiry, and with that answer, 
after some fretfulness, the British minister was forced 
to content himself. In fact, the States General, en- 
grossed in preparations for the war with Spain, sim- 
ply delayed matters until the West India Company 
was organized, when all such questions were referred 
to it for-settlement. It thus became an issue between 
British Plymouth Company and Dutch West India 
Company, and the latter was the stronger of the two, 
both in men and argument. 

The ships of that company, even before the final 
ratification of the amended charter, were trading in 
all the Atlantic waters between Buzzard's Bay (within 
twenty miles of Plymouth) and the Delaware River, 
and a plan of colonization was already matured. A 
number of Walloons (Belgian Protestants of supposed 
Waelsche or Celtic origin), refugees in Holland from 
Spanish persecution, had applied to the British min- 
ister Carleton for leave to emigrate to Virginia. The 
terms offered them do not seem to have been satisfac- 
tory. The Holland Provincials heard of the negotia- 
tions, and suggested to the Amsterdam chamber of 
the West India Company that these would be good 
immigrants with whom to begin the permanent set- 
tlement of the New Netherlands. The suggestion 
was seized upon, and provision made to carry the 
Walloons over in the company's ship then about to 
sail, the " New Netherlands,'' Capt. Cornelis Jacob- 
sen Mey, he who had first sailed into South River, 
and who was going out now as first resident director 
or governor of the colonies. Some thirty families, 
chiefly Walloons, were accordingly taken on board, 
and in the beginning of March, 1623, the "New Neth- 
erlands" sailed from the Texel, Capt. Mey in com- 
mand, the next highest officer being Adriaen Joris, of 
Thienpoint. The course of the ship (and of nearly 
all vessels making the American voyage at that day) 
was southward from the British Channel to the Cana- 
ries, thence across the Atlantic with the trade-winds 
to Guiana and the Caribbees, then northwest between 
the Bermudas and Bahamas until the coast of Virginia 
came in sight. Mey's vessel reached the North River 
safely and in time to drive off a French vessel which 
sought to set up the arms of France on Manhattan 
Island. The Frenchman was foiled in the same way 
on the Zuydt River. Mey distributed his colonists as 
far as he could. The greater part of the Walloons were 
sent up to Albany, several families went to the Dutch 
factory on the Connecticut ; four couples, who had 
married during the voyage out, several sailors, and 
some other men were sent to the South River, now 
also called Prince Hendrick's River. Mey appears 
either to have accompanied them here or visited 
them soon after their arrival. He selected a site for 
their settlement, planting the Walloons on Verhulsten 



58 



HISTORY OP PHILADELPHIA. 



Island, near the present city of Trenton, N. J., and 
hastened the construction of a log fort or stockade 
for his sailors and soldiers at the mouth of the Tim- 
mer Kill, on the New Jersey bank of the Delaware, 
not far from where Gloucester now stands. This fort 
was called "Nassau." Its exact site is not deter- 
mined, nor can we decide the original Indian name 
of the spot, having such a variety to choose from. 1 
This South River colony was soon given up. The 
men and women of the Walloons grew homesick and 
returned to New York, certainly within a year or so, 
the garrison also abandoning the fort to the Indians, 
who occasionally lodged there during several years, 
probably while waiting for trading vessels. Such a 
vessel was sent round to the South River at least once 
a year from Manhattan Island. Thus, it is supposed 
in 1625, the first settlement on the Delaware came 
to naught. 2 Fort Nassau, to conclude its history, 
seems to have been alternately occupied and aban- 
doned by the Dutch until 1650 or 1651, when it was 
destroyed by the Dutch themselves, as being too high 
up the river and too much out of the way. The post 
was then transferred to the new Fort Casimir. In 
1633, De Vries found none but Indians there, but it 
seems to have been restored some time during the 
same year by Governor Van Twiller, who was ac- 
cused of incurring extravagant expense in connec- 
tion with its construction. Arent Corssen was then 
commissary ; he had a clerk, and the governor or- 
dered him to select the site for another structure of 
the same sort on the river. In 1635 an English party 
attempted but failed to capture this fort. They were 
thought to be Lord Baltimore's people, but were more 
likely New Englanders or Virginians.- The Swedes 
repeatedly denied that there was any fort of the 
Dutch on the Delaware in 1638; but the Dutch ac- 
counts of expenditure for the maintenance of Fort 
Nassau charged against that year in the West India 
Company's books disprove this. There was certainly 
enough of a garrison in the fort to report at once and 
protest against the Swedish settlement at Christiana 
in April, 1638. In 1642 the garrison comprised twenty 
men, and the fort was continually occupied from this 
time forth until the Dutch destroyed it. 

1 Hermaomessing, Tachaacho, Arniewamix, Arwames, Tekoke, Ar- 
meuvereus, etc. The year in which the fort was built is also disputed, 
but the circumstances mentioned iu the text make it probable that its 
construction was undertaken very shortly after Capt. Mey's arrival out. 

2 It is not possible to state satisfactorily in what year the settlement 
was given up nor why. The deposition of Peter Lawrenson before Gov- 
ernor Dongan, of New York, in March, 1GS5, says that he came into this 
colony in 1028, and in 1630 (actually 1631), by order of the West India 
Company, he, with some others, was sent in a sloop to the Delaware, 
where the company had a trading-house, witli ten or twelve servants 
belonging to it, which the deponent himself did see settled there. . . . 
" And the deponent further saith that upon an islaud near the falls of 
that river and near the west side thereof, the said company some three or 
four years before had a trading house, where there were three orfour fami- 
lies of Walloons. The place of their settlement he saw; and that they 
had been seated there he was informed by some of the said Walloons 
themselves when they were returned from thence. '' It is in thisindefl- 
nite way that the beginnings of all history are written. 



In 1624, Peter Minuet (the name is also spelled 
Minuit, Minnewit, or Minnewe) came out and suc- 
ceeded Mey as director of the New Netherlands colo- 
nies. He held this position until 1632, when he was 
recalled, and Van Twiller became governor in his 
stead. Minuet, as will be seen farther on, was a 
sagacious and enterprising man, but he had to pur- 
sue a conservative policy as director of the New 
Netherlands, for the welfare of the colony was neg- 
lected sadly by the West India Company. But few 
immigrants and colonists came out, the garrisons were 
not strengthened, nor was much effort made to ex- 
tend either the boundaries or the trade of the colony. 
Some negro slaves indeed were landed on Manhattan 
Island at least as early as 1628, but their labor was 
not esteemed. The chief business done was in trading 
with the Indians for peltries and furs. In fact the 
West India Company was so puffed up with the arro- 
gance that proceeds from great successes and sudden 
wealth, that the directors despised the small and plod- 
ding colonial ways and the slow and meagre profits 
derived from such sources. It had won brilliant vic- 
tories at sea. It had taken in two years one hundred 
and four Spanish prizes. It had paid dividends of 
fifty per cent. It had captured the Panama plate 
fleet. It frequently sent to sea single squadrons of 
seventy armed vessels. It had captured Bahia in 
1624, and Pernambuco in 1630, and it aspired to the 
conquest of Brazil. These brilliant performances cast 
the puny interests of the New Netherlands traders 
into the shade, and the company did not care to be 
bothered with the discharge of duties which were 
nevertheless particularly assigned to it in the charter. 
So obvious was this departure from the original pur- 
poses of the company that so early even as 1624 we find 
that William Usselincx, the founder of the company, 
had abandoned it in disgust, and was seeking to per- 
suade King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden to estab- 
lish a Swedish West India Company, such as would 
be operated more in accordance with his original 
plan. 

There were still some very shrewd heads among the 
members of the Amsterdam chamber, men who while 
quite willing to take all the gold and silver and pre- 
cious stones they could get, yet were fully acquainted 
with the more abiding virtues of land. Of these were 
John De Laet, the historian, Killiaan Van Rensselaer, 
the diamond-cutter, Michael Pauw, Peter Evertsen 
Hulft, Jonas Witsen, Hendrick Hamel, Samuel Go- 
dyn, and Samuel Blommaert, all rich, all well in- 
formed, all interested in the support and develop- 
ment of the colonies on the North and South Rivers, 
especially if these could be effected in a way further 
to enrich themselves. The secretary of Minuet and 
the colony, Isaac De Rasieres, a keen observer aud 
skillful diplomatist, was devoted to the interests of Go- 
dyn, Van Rensselaer, and Blommaert, and he proba- 
bly kept them apprised of all that was going on in the 
New Netherlands. While Minuet, with reduced 



SETTLEMENTS ON THE DELAWARE. 



59 



forces, was compelled through fear of Indians to con- 
centrate his people at Manhattan, abandoning all ex- 
posed places, the Amsterdam directors, after consulting 
with De Rasieres, whom Minuet had sent home, pro- 
cured a meeting of the Executive "College" of nine- 
teen, and secured from it a Charter of Freedoms and 
Exemptions, which the States General confirmed on 
June 7, 1629. This was a complete feudal constitution, 
adopted years before Lord Baltimore's charter. It 
created a landed aristocracy, and handed the State 
over pretty much to their control. The plan for the 
colonization of the territory was its subdivision into 
separate and independent settlements or estates, 
each to be under the control of a patroon, or feudal 
lord, who was to settle it at his own expense in ex- 
change for many peculiar privileges. The charter 
provided that any member of the West India Com- 
pany (to none others were these privileges open) who 
should within four years plant a colony of fifty 
adults in any part of New Netherland (except the 
island of Manhattan, which the company, having 
bought it from the Indians, reserved to itself) should 
be acknowledged as a ''patroon'' or feudal chief of 
the territory he might thus colonize. The land se- 
lected for each colony might extend sixteen miles in 
length if confined to one side of a navigable river, or 
eight miles on each side if both banks were occupied; 
but they might run as far into the country as the sit- 
uation of the occupiers should permit. More immi- 
grants entitled the patroon to proportionately more 
land. The colonists under the patroons were ex- 
empted from all taxes for ten years ; they acquired 
their estates in fee simple with power of disposing by 
will ; they were magistrates within their own bounds, 
and each patroon had the exclusive privilege of fish- 
ing, fowling, and grinding corn within his own do- 
main; they could also trade anywhere along the 
American coast, and to Holland by paying five per 
cent, duty to the company at its reservation of Man- 
hattan. The company reserved the fur trade to itself, 
and none of the colonists were to engage in any man- 
ufactures. 

Before the details of the Charter of Exemptions and 
Privileges were completed some of the Amsterdam 
directors, probably upon the advice of De Rasieres, 
united with one another, or, as we should now say in 
newspaper parlance, formed a " pool" for an enormous 
"land-grab." The first to act were Blommaert, De 
Rasieres' friend, and Godyn. They sent two persons 
in 1629 to the Zuydt River to examine and buy land, 
and these agents purchased from the Indians, on the 
south side of Delaware Bay, a tract thirty-two miles 
long and two miles deep from Cape Hinlopen to the 
mouth of a river, the patent being registered and con- 
firmed June 1, 1630. Sebastian Jansen Krol, Van 
Rensselaer's agent, bought from the Indians for him 
on the west side of the Hudson, near Albany, a tract 
sixteen miles front and extending back two days' 
journey into the wilderness. This patroon made 



other purchases a few days later, and became propri- 
etor of nearly all of what are the present counties of 
Albany and Rensselaer. Michael Pauw secured in 
the same way the patroonship of Pavonia and Staten 
Island, Paulus Hook and Jersey City. The land- 
grabbers now began to quarrel among themselves, and 
to avoid scandal and exposure Van Rensselaer di- 
vided his tract into five shares, two of which he 
retained with the title of patroon ; one fell to John 
De Laet, one to Samuel Godyn, and one to Samuel 
Blommaert. In the same way Godyn and Blommaert 
shared with their partners the tract on South River. 

In the mean time Godyn and Blommaert had to 
improve their tract. Opportunely for them there 
arrived at this time at Amsterdam, fresh from a three 
years' cruise to the East Indies, one David Pietersen 
de Vries, of Hoorn, a skipper who in 1624 had 
attempted unsuccessfully to invade the West India 
Company's monopoly. De Vries, a rough but kindly 
man, keen, observant, and well versed in affairs as 
well as seamanship, was well known to Godyn. As 
soon as his arrival was known the latter approached 
him and asked if he would like to go to New Nether- 
land as commander and " under-patroon." But De 
Vries would not go in any capacity except upon an 
equality with the rest. He was accordingly taken 
into the partnership with Godyn and Blommaert, 
Van Rensselaer and De Laet, to whom were soon 
added four other directors of the West India Com- 
pany, Van Ceulen, Hamel, Van Haringhoeck, and 
Van Sittorigh. 

De Vries became a patroon Oct. 16, 1630, and at 
once set to work to promote the designs of his asso- 
ciates. The ship " Walrus," or " Whale," of eighteen 
guns, and a yacht were immediately equipped. They 
carried out emigrants, cattle, food, and whaling im- 
plements, De Vries having heard that whales abounded 
in the Bay of South River (Godyn's Bay, or New Port 
May Bay, as it now also began to be called), and ex- 
pecting to establish profitable fisheries there. The 
expedition sailed from the Texel in December under 
the command of Pieter Heyes, or Heyser. De Vries 
did not go out at this time, and the voyage was not 
profitable. De Vries accuses Heyes of incapacity 
and cowardice, saying he would not sail through the 
West Indies in an eighteen-gun ship. Still, Heyes 
did a large business for his employers. He reached 
South River in the spring of 1631, and established 
his colony on the Horekill, " a fine navigable stream, 
filled with islands, abounding in good oysters," and 
surrounded by fertile soil. The place was near the 
present site of Lewes, Del. Here a palisaded brick 
house was erected, and the colony of more than thirty 
souls was called Swaannendael, the Valley of Swans. 
The Dutch title was inscribed upon a pillar, on a 
plate of tin, surmounted by the arms of Holland. 
The fort, named "Oplandt," was given in the com- 
mand of Gilliss Hossett, Van Rensselaer's agent in 
buying lands around Albany. Heyes, after he had 



60 



HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA. 



settled matters at Swaannendael, crossed to the Jer- 
sey shore and bought from ten chiefs there, on behalf 
of Godyn, Blommaert, and their associates, a tract of 
land extending from Cape May twelve miles north- 
ward along the bay and twelve miles inland. This 
purchase was registered at Manhattan June 3, 1631. 
The whale fishery having come to naught, in Sep- 
tember Heyes sailed for home to report to his em- 
ployers. 

De Vries now determined to go out to the South 
River himself, and preparations were made for him to 
take charge of another ship and yacht. Just as he 
was about to sail from the Texel, May 24, 1632, Gov- 
ernor Minuet arrived from New Amsterdam with 
intelligence of the massacre of the colony at Swaan- 
nendael. This was cold news for De Vries and his 
associates. The patroon sailed, however, and after a 
long and checkered voyage arrived off Swaannendael 
early in December. The site of the little settlement 
told a fearful tale ; the house itself nearly ruined, 
the stockade burnt, and the adjacent land strewed 
with the skulls and bones of the colonists, the remains 
of cattle, etc. The valley was silent and desolate. 

De Vries returned 
on board his yacht 
and fired a gun to 
attract attention of 
the savages. After 
some mutual mis- 
trust, communica- 
tion was opened 
with them, and 
De Vries was told 
a cock-and-bull 
story of a chief 
having ignorantly 
removed the coat 
of arms from the 
pillar and been murdered by the Indians for doing it, 
whereupon his tribe, in revenge, massacred the colo- 
nists. De Vries knew too much about the Dutch 
cruelty and harshness to the Indians to believe any 
such story. He had before him all the evidences of 
the white man's cruelty and the savage's wild revenge. 
The fatal deed was irreparable, and De Vries, keep- 
ing his own counsel, did what he could to restore con- 
fidence and peace by making presents to the Indians 
of" duffles, bullets, hatchets, and Nuremberg toys," so 
as to get them to hunt beaver for him, instead of lying 
in ambush to murder more colonists. The result was a 
treaty of peace, the first ever made in Delaware waters. 
On Jan. 1, 1633, the navigation being open, De 
Vries proceeded up the bay and river in his yacht. 
At Fort Nassau he heard of the murder of the crew 
of an English sloop, and met some Indians wearing 
the Englishmen's jackets. These Indians also made a 




DAVID PIKTF.RSEN DE YRIKK. 



show of offering peace, but De Vries dealt with them 
very cautiously, as they greatly outnumbered his men. 
On January 10th, De Vries cast anchor at the bar 
of Jacques Eylandt, precisely opposite the present 
city of Philadelphia, over against Willow Street, 
being in fact now part of the fast land of New 
Jersey. 1 Thence he went down river again, an- 
choring half a mile above Minquas Kill, on the look- 
out for whales. He was finally twice frozen up, and 
in some danger from Indians, numerous war parties 
of whom he saw, there being some intestine feud 
among the adjacent tribes. Eeleased from the ice, 
he reached Swaannendael on February 20th, and on 
March 6th sailed for Virginia, returning to South 
River only to break up the colony at Swaannendael 
and go home. Once more the Delaware River and 
Bay were abandoned to the Indians, and once more 
the attempt at settlement by white men had failed. 
There were no further efforts made to settle on South 
River until the Swedes came in 1638, but, as has been 
stated, there must have been a more or less intermit- 
tent occupancy at Fort Nassau, and possibly there 
may have been a permanent garrison from the begin- 
ning of Van Twiller's director-generalship. 2 



1 The bar of Jacques Eylandt embraces the spot where the city of 
Camden is now built. 

2 The 21st of June, 1G34, is the alleged date of the probably spurious 
Sir Edward Plowden or Ployden's charter for impossible territory some- 
where between the Potomac and Newark Bay. 

Rev. Edward D. Neill, president of Macalester College, Minn., who has 
given considerable attention to Maryland history, though from a rather 
sectarian stand-point, contributed two papers on Plowden to the fifth vol- 
ume of the Pennsylvania Magazine, conducted by the Historical Society of 
that State. He assumes Plowden's existence, and that he was the lineal 
descendant of Edmund Plowden, the commentator on English law, who 
earned Coke's encomiums and who died in 1584. Plowden, according to 
Neill, did obtain a grant in 1632, through King Charles I.'s request to 
the viceroy of Ireland for a certain "Isle Plowden'' and forty leagues of 
the mainland, called " New Albion." The island lay between 39° and 
40° latitude. Capt. Young, commissioned by the king in September, 
1633, sent out an exploring expedition in 1634, which ascended the Del- 
aware as far as the Falls. If this expedition ever sailed, it must have 
been the one mentioned by De Vries as having been massacred by the 
Indians. There is no proof that Plowden sent out this party or had aught 
to do with it. Evelyn, who commanded it, was in the service of Clay- 
borne's London partners. Plowden, says Mr. Neill, was living at his seat 
at Wanstead in Hampshire in 1635, unhappy, heating his wife, quarrel- 
ing with his neighbors, and changing his religion. His wife and his 
clergyman's wife both had him arrested for assault and battery, and his 
wife procured a divorce from him. In 1641, Evelyn wrote a pamphlet 
descriptive of New Albion, dedicated to Plowden's wife. The next year 
Plowden was on the Chesapeake. This was ten years after he is said to 
have procured this rich grant. No one can explain why he did not look 
after such an estate sooner. Plowden lived most of his time in Virginia, 
but was in Maryland ou Delaware Bay, at New York, and in New Eng- 
land. He was abroad just seven years, say his chroniclers, and then 
went home to return no more to ll Now Albion." It is conjectured that 
his seven years' residence was on account of being transported, and that 
his New Albion claim was trumped up after the time of his sentence 
was served out. Plowden is reputed to have died in 1665. Mr. Neill 
further says that in 1635-40, Plowden was a prisoner in the Fleet Prison, 
London, for refusing to pay his wife's alimony. Mr. Neill must see that 
the dates of Plowden's adventures are irreconcilable with his adven- 
tures. 



SWEDISH SETTLEMENTS ON THE DELAWARE. 



61 



CHAPTER V. 
THE SWEDISH SETTLEMENTS ON THE DELAWARE. 

Fort Nassau, on the Delaware, whether occupied 
permanently or not as a Dutch trading-post in 1633, 
must have had runners near by to bring news from it 
to Manhattan. John Romeyn Brodhead, the accurate 
historian of New York State, thinks it was not garri- 
soned then, nor in 1635, when the English party oc- 
cupied it. This party of thirteen men, under George 
Holmes, was sent, he says, from Virginia by Governor 
Harvey, in consequence of the talk of the latter with 
De Vries in 1632. Other writers have thought they 
came from Maryland or Connecticut. They seized 
the fort, but Hall, Holmes' servant, deserted and went 
to Manhattan, carrying the news of the occupancy of 
Fort Nassau by the English. An armed force was at 
once sent in a sloop to dislodge them. Holmes and 
his men were made prisoners and sent back to Vir- 
ginia, just as another party was starting to reinforce 
them. De Vries, on his return to Amsterdam from 
the deserted post of Swaannendael, found the partners 
quarreling among themselves and with the other direc- 
tors. Not willing to mix in these disputes, he with- 
drew from the patroon partnership, and after the death 
of Godyn, in 1634, the West India Company settled 
the disputes by buying Swaannendael from Godyn's 
heirs and associates for fifteen thousand six hundred 
guilders, thus becoming again the legal proprietary of 
all the territory on both sides of the Delaware. A 
deed, recorded at Manhattan in 1648 and attested by 
Augustine Hermans, Govert Loockerman, and others, 
is adduced to show that the land on the Schuylkill 
called Armenverius, where this year (1648) Hudde 
had begun to build a fort called " Beversrede," was 
acquired by purchase from sundry Indian chiefs, 
by the company's agent on the South River, Arendt 
Corssen, in 1633. Nor is this improbable. Of this 
purchase Augustine Hermans was a witness,, as he 
was at- this time clerk to Corssen. The Dutch not 
only knew of the pretensions and promised coming 
of the Swedes, but they knew also that Lord Balti- 
more was about to sail from England, and that his 
charter called for a frontier line touching the Dela- 
ware westward of the mouth of the Schuylkill. They 
would naturally seek to secure Indian titles in ad- 
vance for every acre of territory likely to be brought 
in dispute. 

It is impossible to state the causes of the alienation 
of William Usselincx from the Dutch West India 
Company. He had labored strenuously for over 
thirty years 1 to secure that company's charter, yet 



1 His first attempts were made in 1590. Usselincx probably left the 
Dutch West India Company because he had not money enough to se- 
cure an influential share in its stock by paying up his subscription. 
He appears to have been a bankrupt about that time. In the charter 
given to the Swedish Company be was recognized aB director, and his 
services in that capacity and as organizer and founder of the company 
were to be compensated by a fee or royalty of one-tenth of one per cent. 



he deserted it less than a year after the company was 
fully organized. He went to Stockholm, visited the 
valiant king, Gustavus Adolphus, of Sweden, and 
full, probably, of enthusiasm as well as special knowl- 
edge of his subject, pleaded so eloquently the advan- 
tages of colonization in general and the particular 
beauties and attractions of the territory along the 
South River which he proposed should be planted, 
that on Dec. 21, 1624, the king granted him a com- 
mission to form a Swedish West India Company 
somewhat upon the plan of that of the Netherlands, 
of which Usselincx was the founder and originator. 
Usselincx's plan was one which would naturally 
awaken the sympathy and excite the imagination 
of an ambitious monarch. He proposed to organize 
a trading company, to extend its operations into Asia, 
Africa, America, and Terra Magellanica. This com- 
pany would plant Christianity among the heathen, 
extend his Majesty's dominions, enrich the treasury, 
reduce the burden of domestic taxation, and put lu- 
crative trade at the command of Sweden's hardy sea- 
men and enterprising merchants. The prosecution 
of the scheme would finally "tend greatly to the 
honor of God, to man's eternal welfare, to his Majes- 
ty's service, and the good of the kingdom." 

The plans of Gustavus were both deep and patri- 
otic. "The year 1624," says the historian Geijer, 
"was one of the few years that the king was able 
to devote to the internal development of the realm." 
He looked at the subject of colonization in America, 
says Rev. Dr. W. M. Reynolds in the introduction to 
his translation of Acrelius, " with the eye of a states- 
man who understood the wants not only of his own 
country but of the world, and was able with pro- 
phetic glance to penetrate into the distant ages of 
the future." He proposed there to found a free state, 
where the laborer should reap the fruit of his toil, 
where the rights of conscience should be inviolate, 
and which should be open to the whole Protestant 
world then engaged in a struggle for existence with 
all the papal powers of Europe. All should be se- 
cure in their persons, their property, and their rights 
of conscience. It should be an asylum for the perse- 
cuted of all nations, a place of security for the honor 
of the wives and daughters of those who were flying 
from bloody battle-fields and from homes made deso- 
late by the fire and sword of the persecutor. No 
slaves should burden the soil ; " for," said Gustavus, 
—and we realize the profound truth of his political 

upon all the exports and imports of the company. Usselincx seems U» 
have been a sort of " projector" or " prospector, 1 ' planning comprehen ■ 
sive commercial schemes which he had not the capital nor the credit to 
set afloat himself. He was a man, however, evidently of great experi 
ence, wide views, and the ability to express himself cogently and elo- 
I quently. He is supposed to be the author of the greater part of the doc- 
uments in the Argtmaulica Gustaviana, printed under the auspices of the 
Swedish government at Frankfort-on-the-Main in 1033, which did so 
much to promote the objects of the Swedish Company. He also wrote 
many pamphlets and circulars addressed to the leading towns of Sweden 
the Ilanseatic cities, France, the States General, etc., "all of them," says 
Prof. C. T. Odhner, "abounding in clear thoughts and brilliant fancies.' 



62 



HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA. 



economy after an experience of two centuries, at the 
end of which slavery expired amid the death-throes 
of our civil war — '' slaves cost a great deal, lahor with 
reluctance, and soon perish from hard usage. But 
the Swedish nation is industrious and intelligent, 
and herehy we shall gain more by a free people 
with wives and children." 1 

The plan and contract were translated into the 
Swedish language by Schrader, the royal interpreter, 
and published to the nation, with an address and sup- 
ported by the king's recommendation. People of all 
ranks were invited by royal edict to subscribe, and 
Gustavus pledge'd the royal treasury for its support to 
the amount of four hundred thousand dollars. The 
edict was ratified in 1627 in a general meeting of the 
States, and the people welcomed the new enterprise 
with enthusiasm. It was proposed to execute the 
plan at once, and every one subscribed from the 
queen-mother and Prince Casimir down through all 
ranks of nobility, clergy, military, burghers, and 
peasantry. Ships and all necessaries are said to have 
been provided and the work was ripe for execution, 
when a revival of the Polish and German wars called 
the king away to the field. Campanius and others 
would have us believe that the fleet sailed and was 
captured by the Spaniards. It is more likely, how- 
ever, that the exigencies of war called for the post- 
ponement of the comprehensive scheme. Gustavus 
needed all his meagre resources to aid him in the 
field. 

In 1632 the brave king fell gloriously on the battle- 
field of Lutzen, and his little daughter, Christina, 
was bequeathed to the astute guardianship of Chan- 
cellor Oxenstierna. One of the last acts of Gustavus 
had been to urge his people not to forget nor neglect 
the colonization scheme, and Oxenstierna took an 
early opportunity to have the patent renewed, with 
Usselincx still director, and to publish the merits of 
the proposed new venture throughout Europe. In 
the mean time, in part probably through the inter- 
mediary of Usselincx, the services of Peter Minuet, 
latel}' recalled from the director-generalship of New 
Netherland, were secured to superintend and direct 
the new plantation. The delays in preparation, how- 
ever, prevented the expedition from sailing until late 
in the year 1637. Minuet was a native of Wessel, in 
Cleves, the nearest borderland of Holland on the side 
of Germany. It is supposed that he left the city of 
his forefathers when it fell into Spanish hands on 
occasion of the Jiilich-Cleves war of succession. He 
entered the service of the Dutch West India Com- 
pany, and, as has been seen, became director or gov- 
ernor over the colony of New Netherland, residing 
at New Amsterdam from 1626 to 1632, and proving 
himself an efficient officer. The intrigues consequent 
upon the quarrels of the patroons caused his dismissal 
in 1632. In 1635, Axel Oxenstierna was on a visit to 

1 Arguuautica Gugtaviana. 



Holland to secure more support for Sweden in the 
prosecution of the Thirty Years' war. He was at the 
Hague and Amsterdam in May of that year, and in 
the latter city met Samuel Blommaert, the Dutch 
patroon, who, in conjunction with Godyn, had located 
tracts of land at Cape May and from Cape Henlopen 
up the Delaware Bay on the west side. Blommaert 
was also a friend and patron of Usselincx. He im- 
mediately opened a correspondence with the Swedish 
Prime Minister on the subject of the Swedish West 
India Company and the colonization of the South 
River country. 2 Blommaert's first letters were di- 
rected to the plan of an expedition to the coast of 
Guinea or Brazil, a favorite idea of Usselincx's, who 
wanted to spoil the Spaniards and Portuguese and 
get gold. Oxenstierna's thoughts, however, had a 
more pacific turn. In the spring of 1636 the chan- 
cellor was visited in Wismar by his friend Peter 
Spiring, a Dutchman, who had just come from look- 
ing after the regulation of the Prussian excise system, 
and was now on his way back to Holland. He had 
been and was at that time more or less in Oxenstierna's 
employment, and he was now commissioned to try to 
raise money in Holland for Sweden, and also "to ob- 
serve whether it might not be possible in this con- 
junction to obtain some service in affairs of commerce 
or manufacture." Spiring, on reaching Amsterdam, 
had several conversations with Blommaert, and was 
by him put in communication with Peter Minuet. 
When Spiring returned to Sweden he brought with 
him for Oxenstierna a memorial written by Minuet, 
specifying the preparations requisite to planting a 
Swedish colony (to be called Nova Suedia) in some 
foreign part of the world. 

The estimate called for a vessel of sixty to one hun- 
dred laster (one hundred and twenty to two hundred 
tons), a cargo of ten thousand or twelve thousand 
gulden in goods, a company of twenty to twenty-five 
men, provisions for a year, a dozen soldiers to serve as 
a garrison for the post, and a small vessel to remain at 
the settlement. At this time the idea in view was a 
factory apparently on the Gold Coast. Spiring was sent 
back to Holland in the fall of 1636 in the capacity of 
Swedish resident and "counselor of the finances'' 
[finansrad) with a title of nobility thrown in, so that 
he now signed himself Pieter Spieringk Sttvercroen op 
Norsholm. 3 When Spiring arrived in Holland in Oc- 

2 The discovery of this correspondence, lately made by Prof. Odhner, 
in the Royal Archives of Sweden, has thrown an entirely new light 
upon the history of the Swedish expeditions to the Delaware prior to that 
of Printz, and enables us to correct the errors into which previous writers 
have fallen from following too closely the accounts of Campanius and 
Acrelius. The latter is very accurate so far as his knowledge goes, but 
he did not search the records of Sweden as closely as he did those of the 
SwediBh Churches in America. Blommaert's letters to the Swedish chan- 
cellor are written in Dutch. 

3 This was in Dutch; the SwediBh was Sil/ercron till Noreholm. All 
these interesting details are from the translation of Prof. Odhner's paper, 
''The Founding of New Sweden" (Kolonien Ni/a Sv/iriges GrundltLggning, 
1037-1642. Op C. T. Odhner, nisi. Bibliotek. Nyfoljd I. ««. 197-235. Stock, 
holm, 1876), published in vol. iii. of the Pennsylvania Magazine of History 
and Biography. 



SWEDISH SETTLEMENTS ON THE DELAWARE. 



03 



tober he handed to Bloramaert his appointment as 
Swedish commissary at Amsterdam, with a salary of 
one thousand riksdaler. There were immediate con- 
sultations between Spiring, Blommaert, and Minuet; 
the idea of a Guinea factory was abandoned, and prepa- 
rations made, secretly and privately, so as not to alarm 
the Dutch West India Company, for planting a colony 
in North America on soil not occupied by either Dutch 
or English. The cost of this expedition was estimated 
at twenty-four thousand Dutch florins (worth about 
forty cents) ; Minuet was to be commander, and Blom- 
maert commissioner for it at Amsterdam. The money 
was contributed, half by Minuet, Blommaert, and their 
friends in Amsterdam, half subscribed in Sweden by 
Spiring, the three Oxenstiernas, Clas Fleming, prac- 
tical chief of the Swedish Admiralty and secretary 
of the Swedish Company. 1 Minuet went to Sweden 
in February, 1637, and began his preparations, Blom- 
maert secured crews and cargo, and all were sent to 
Gottenburg, the expedition intending to start in the 
spring. Delay came.from a prolonged illness of Minuet 
and other causes. However, the passports for the ves- 
sels were issued by the Swedish Admiralty on Aug. 9, 
1637, when the two ships, the "Kalmar Nyckel" 
and the " Gripen," left Stockholm. They did not, 
however, sail from Gottenburg until late in the fall, 
and then encountered such severe weather that they 
were forced to put into the Dutch harbor of Medem- 
blik in December to refit and take in provisions, 
finally sailing for their destination just about the close 
of the year. They sailed as the ships of the Swedish 
West India Company, and as if dispatched to enjoy 
the benefit of its privileges. 2 

The charter of the Swedish West India Company 
gave to the associated subscribers the exclusive right 
for twelve years to trade beyond the Straits of Gibral- 
tar southward in Africa, and in America and Austra- 
lia, reaching the coast of America at the same latitude 
as said straits, viz., 36°, also with all lands and islands 
between Africa and America in the same latitude, the 
vessels and goods of others than the same company 
who infringe those rights to be confiscated. Accounts 



1 Spiring gave four thousand five hundred florins, Axel find Gabriel 
Gust.'ifian Oxenstierna three thousand each, and the rest smaller sums. 

2 The passes granted were to Capt. Anders Nilsson Krober, of the 
" Kalmar Nyckcl" (in Butch De Kalmers leutel), and " Vogel Grip" 
(Dulch, Dr. Fogelgryp), commanded by Lieut. Jacob Borben. The " Key 
of Kalmar 1 ' (named after a city of Sweden, on the Baltic coast of Goth- 
land, off the island of Oland, and famous aB being the place where the 
uoyou of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway was consummated in 1397, 
under the imperious Queen Blargaretof Denmark, called the "Semir- 
amis of the North") was a regubir man-of-war of quite good capacity. 
The "Griffin" (or " Bird Griffin") was a sloop or yacht for shallow water. 
The cost of the expedition, through delays, ran up above thirty-Bix thou- 
sand florins, causing the Dutch subscribers to grumble. The only 
person, so far as known, who came t.j New Sweden on the "Gripen" 
and remained with the colony was ein morian oder angoler, "a Moor or 
Angola man," a negro named Anthony, a bought slave (the first on the 
Delaware), who served Governor Printz at Tinnecum in 1644 (" making 
hay for the cattle and accompanying the Governor in his pleasure- 
yacht"), and was still living in 1G48. (Note of G. B. Keen in his transla- 
tion of Odliner.) 



were to be settled every year, and every person inter- 
ested to the amount of one thousand thalers could be 
present. Final settlements every six years, when the 
company might be dissolved if its profit or influence 
be not obvious. Directors or regents to be elected , one 
for each one hundred thousand thalers of stock, these 
directors to be all equal in authority, and to be paid 
one thousand thalers each per annum. The company 
was put under the royal protection, and given the 
same extensive trade and foreign privileges as those 
enumerated in connection with the Dutch Company, 
but was forbidden aggressive acts against either sav- 
age or civilized people. Its object was not war, but 
peaceful trade and settlement. The founder and di- 
rector of the company, William Usselincx, was to be 
paid the tenth of one per cent, royalty on all the 
traffic of the company in recognition of his services. 

There is nothing satisfactory known concerning 
Minuet's voyage across the Atlantic. Since Professor 
Odhner wrote, however, a further search among the 
Swedish archives has been made, and a contract 
signed by Governor Printz has been discovered, in 
which it is mentioned that Minuet bought land on 
the Delaware from an Indian chief on March 29, 
1638, so that he must have arrived inside the Capes 
of the Delaware at least three or four days before 
that date. This corroborates some of the inferences 
of Odhner, and enables us to correct other less accu- 
rate accounts of this expedition. For example, it 
has generally been supposed that Minuet arrived 
later than this date, from a letter written from 
Jamestown, Va., May 8, 1638, by Jerome Hawley, 
treasurer of the Virginia colony, to Secretary Winde- 
banke, of the London Company. Hawley says, 
" Since which time have arrived a Dutch ship, with 
commission from the Queen of Sweden, and signed 
by eight of the chief Lords of Sweden. . . . The 
ship remained here about ten days, to refresh with 
wood and water, during which time the master of 
said ship made known that both himself and another 
ship of his company were bound for Delaware Bay." 

The vessel asked the privilege of laying in a cargo 
of tobacco for Sweden free of duty, but this was re- 
fused. Professor Odhner shows, however, that this 
vessel could not have been the "Key of Kalmar," 
with Minuet on board, but the yacht " Griffin," 
which, after his arrival in the Delaware, the com- 
mander sent to Jamestown with the idea of bartering 
her cargo in Virginia. Minuet appears not to have 
confided to the Holland directors his exact destina- 
tion. Blommaert in his letters speaking continually 
of the " voyagen till Florida." In the same way it is 
suspected that Minuet concealed the Dutch protests 
made after his arrival, and declared that he found 
the country totally unoccupied by Christians after an 
exploration some distance inland. It was necessary 
to deceive Blommaert, for it was less than two years 
since he and Godyn had sold this very country which 
the Swedes were occupying back to the Dutch West 



64 



HISTORY OP PHILADELPHIA. 



India Company for a good round sum of money. 
Minuet's vessels first sighted the coast at Cape Hen- 
lopen, and from thence they steered into the Dela- 
ware Bay, landing first at Mispillion, the landscape 
of which so charmed them in its April bloom that 
they called it " Paradise Point." They then passed 
up the Delaware to Minquas Creek (the Christina, 
or Christiana, as now called), and finally anchored 
at " the Rocks," a natural landing-place at the foot 
of what is now Sixth Street, Wilmington, Del. Here 
the freight and passengers were landed, and Minuet 
set all hands to work at once to erect shelter on 
shore and build a fort. The latter was named Fort 
Christina, after the queen of Sweden, daughter of 
Gustavus, still in her minority, and the settlement, 
the first permanent settlement on the Delaware, was 
called Christinaham, or Christina Harbor. Minuet 
called the colony New Sweden, and the river Elbe, but 
the settlers called it Kristinas Kill, and the local name 
is still Oristeen. The fort, of which a plan is extant, 




PLAN OF THE TOWN AND FORT OF CHRISTINA, HESIHGED 

BY THE DUTCH IN 1055. 

[From Canipanius 1 New Sweden.] 

A, Fort Christina. B, Christina Creek. C, Town of Christina Hainn. 
I), Tennekong Land. E, Fish Kill. F, Slaugenborg. G, Myggenhorg. 
H, Rottnborg. I, Flingenborg. K, Timber Island. L, Kitchen. 
M, Position of the besiegers. N, Harbor. 0, Mine. P, Swamp. 

drawn by the Swedish engineer Lindstrom in 1655, 
was built close to the point of rocks, its southern 
rampart bordering on the creek. Two log houses 
were built inside the inclosure for the garrison arid 
settlers. A cove under the eastern wall of the fort 
was called the basin, or harbor, and it afforded a safe 
dock for such vessels as came there. The land for 
the fort and Christinaham was bought from five near- 
by Indian sachems, one of whom bore the name of 
Mattahorn or Mattahoon, the price paid being a cop- 
per kettle and some small articles. The sachem 
whose name is given later said that they only bought 
of him so much land as lay " within six trees," the 



trees being blazed as surveyor's marks, probably, and 
promised to pay him half the tobacco grown upon it, 
a promise never kept. A deed was drawn up in Low 
Dutch, and signed by both parties. The Dutch his- 
torians say that this deed was the only conveyance 
under which the Swedes claimed the whole south 
side of the Delaware Bay and River from Cape Hen- 
lopen to Trenton (Sankitan), but the better opinion 
is that this large territory was a later and independ- 
ent purchase. 1 A part of this territory, including 
Swaannendael, had belonged to the original territory 
bought of the Indians by Godyn, Blommaert & Co., 
and by them sold to the Dutch West India Company. 

Minuet and his colonists at Minquas Creek were only 
a few miles below Fort Nassau, and the Dutch were in- 
stantly apprised of their arrival. William Kieft, the 
successor of Van Twiller, and the new director- 
general at Manhattan, had arrived out March 28th, 
or near the same time as Minuet. Among his staff 
were Andreas Hudde, first commissary, Jan Jansen 
Van Ilpendam, and Peter Mey, all of whom became 
conspicuous in the affairs of the Dutch and Swedes 
on the Delaware. Ilpendam was made commissary 
of Fort Nassau, now in a decayed state, in spite of 
Van Twiller's expenditures for its restoration, and 
Mey was his assistant. On April 28th Kieft wrote to 
the directors of the company in Amsterdam that Mey 
had reported Minuet's presence on the Delaware, and 
that he sent Jan Jansen to him to protest against 
anything being done by the intruders to the com- 
pany's disadvantage. Minuet at first temporized, 
and finally avowed his purpose to build a fort, saying 
that his queen had as much right there as the com- 
pany. Early in May Kieft sent a formal protest to 
Minuet over his own signature as director-general of 
New Netherland, notifying him of the fact (of which 
none could be more entirely aware than the man 
calling himself " commissioner in the service of her 
royal majesty of Sweden") "that the whole South 
River in New Netherland has been many years in 
our possession, and has been secured by us with forts 
above and below, and sealed with our blood." He 
further informs Minuet that if he proceeded with the 
building of forts, cultivating land, and trading in 
furs and other things, to the prejudice and damage of 
the company, he must be answerable for the conse- 
quences to himself and his employers, as the Dutch 
meant to defend their rights. 

Those rights, as against the pretensions of Minuet 
and the Swedes, were undoubted in every view of tile 
law and custom of new settlements. Minuet made 
no reply to Kieft but continued to build his fort, and 
by means of a shrewd liberality to the Indians in- 
duced them to bring to him instead of to Fort Nassau 
all the furs and peltries they were taking on the 



1 Compare Brodhead, Hazard's Annals of Pennsylvania, Vincent's 
History of Delaware, Ferris' Original Settlements, etc., and Clay's 
Annals of the Swedes. Brodhead is always full and accurate, but he 
never forgets that he is a New Yorker. 



SWEDISH SETTLEMENTS ON THE DELAWARE. 



05 



South River. Kieft in another dispatch dated July 
31, 1638, reports that " Minuet has built a fort near 
the Delaware, five miles below our fort, and draws 
all the skins towards him by his liberal gifts ; he has 
departed with the two vessels he had with him,' leav- 
ing twenty- four men in the fort provided with all 
sorts of merchandise and provisions, and has put 
down posts, on which are the letters C. R. S., 1 Chris- 
tina Regina Suesciae. Jan Jansen has, according to 
my orders, protested against this, in which he gave 
an answer, a copy of which goes herewith. We 
afterwards sent him a formal clause of protest, which 
was read to him, but he did not feel inclined to an- 
swer it, and his proceeding is a great disadvantage to 
the company." Kieft's statement in regard to the 
departure of Minuet at this time has been contra- 
dicted by all the older writers on the subject, in- 
cluding the usually very accurate Acrelius, who even 
goes so far as to state that Minuet died and was 
buried at Christina, after serving faithfully at his 
post until 1641. Minuet's biographer, Kapp, does 
not controvert this. It remained for Professor 
Odhner to give the facts, confirming the statement 
of Kieft, and explaining why we hear no more of 
Minuet. Having made all the necessary arrange- 
ments for the safety of his colony, provisioned the 
fort and supplied it with articles for trading with the 
Indians, Minuet prepared to return home. He left 
the fort under the command of Lieut. Mans (Moens) 
Kling, the only Swede expressly named as taking 
part in the first expedition (though Acrelius men- 
tions the Swedish priest, Reorus Torkillus, who, it is 
likely, came with a later expedition), and Hendrick 
Huyghen, who is said to have been Minuet's kins- 
man, his cousin or brother-in-law. Kling had charge 
of the military, and Huyghen of the civil government 
of the post. Minuet appears to have sailed for home 
in July, 1638, as Kieft's letter of the 28th of that month 
speaks of him as having already departed. He sent 
the yacht " Griffin" on in advance to the West Indies 
to barter the cargo brought out from Gottenburg, sail- 
ing in the same direction himself with the " Key of 
Kalmar." Blommaert condemns him for this in his 
letter to the Swedish chancellor, as he might have 
come home at once in his vessel, transferring the res- 
idue of his cargo to the yacht. At the island of St. 
Christopher he traded his goods for a cargo of to- 
bacco. He was ready to sail for home when he and 
his captain were invited aboard a Dutch ship in the 
harbor called " Het vliegende hert" (the •' Flying 
Deer"). While aboard this vessel a cyclone came up, 
driving all the ships in the harbor out to sea. Many 
were dismasted or otherwise injured by the hurricane. 
The "Flying Deer" and Minuet were never heard of 
again, and the vessel is supposed to have foundered. 
The " Kalmar Nyckel" escaped the storm, returned 
to port, and cruised around for some time in hopes to 



1 ChriBtilla, Queen of Sweden. 



get news of Minuet. Failing in this she at last 
sailed away and pursued her voyage to Sweden. In 
the North Sea she encountered another storm in No- 
vember, which drove her into a Dutch port to refit. 
The " Griffin," after a cruise in the vicinity of Ha- 
vana, returned to New Sweden, took on a cargo of 
furs which had been gathered from the Indians for 
her, and then departed for Sweden, arriving in Got- 
tenburg at the close of May, 1639, having made the 
voyage from Christina in five weeks. It is likely that 
Kieft would have expelled the company left by 
Minuet from the South River without ceremony and 
at once had they not borne the commission of tin- 
daughter of Gustavus Adolphus, the champion of 
Protestantism in Europe. T ne Dutch West India 
Company knew how distasteful it would be to the 
whole Dutch people should they venture to embroil 
themselves with a great, powerful, warlike nation, 
with which they had made common cause in so many 
stirring events. The evidence of this feeling was 
manifest soon after the reception of Kieft's first dis- 
patches in Holland. A Swedish vessel was seized at 
Medemblik by order of the West India Company's 
chamber at Eckhuysen, upon the charge of illegal 
trading with America, but as soon as the Swedish 
minister at the Hague made his protest the ship 
was released and permitted to complete her voyage. 
As to Kieft's willingness to act, he proved that shortly 
after, when he promptly expelled the English in- 
truders from the Delaware, and by his energetic pro- 
cedures at Cow Bay, L. I., against the Massachusetts 
people. 

The first year of the Cristinaham colony was prosper- 
ous. They shipped thirty thousand skins to Sweden, 
and injured the Dutch trade so much that the West 
India Company adopted police regulations for the 
navigation of South River, and talked of abandoning 
the fur trade altogether. The next year, however, 
the people of the colony were depressed by climatic dis- 
eases, and Reorus Torkillus, the colony's first clergy- 
man, had his hands full of work, as probably also had 
Jan Petersen, of Alfendolft, barber and surgeon at 
Fort Nassau. 2 Torkillus had come over, in the 
"Kalmar Nyckel," with Peter Hollandaer, who was 
sent to act as Minuet's successor, in the second Swed- 
ish expedition. This expedition Acrelius seems to 
have known nothing about. We are again indebted 
to the researches of Professor Odhner for the particu- 
lars of this voyage. Minuet's loss was a severe blow, 
and the Dutch partners seemed disposed to abandon 
the enterprise, or anyhow throw the weight of it on 
Sweden. They were in trouble also with the Dutch 
West India directors, who repented their share in 
promoting the Swedish plantation on the South River. 
These desagrements finally led the Swedish govern- 
ment to buy out the Holland partners, who were 

2 In this year there is unmistakable evidence of negro slavery among 
the Dutch on South River, a convict from Manhattan being sentenced to 
serve with the blacks on that river. 



66 



HISTOEY OF PHILADELPHIA. 



found to be "a hindrance," and an appropriation for 
that purpose was made on Feb. 20, 1641, the sum paid 
in settlement of all claims being eighteen thousand 
guilders. The new Swedish Company was given a 
monopoly of the Baltic tobacco trade. In the mean 
time, however, Clas Fleming, president of the Swed- 
ish College of Commerce, and his secretary, Jan 
Beyer, were resolved not to neglect New Sweden. A 
Dutch captain, Cornelis Van Vliet, was commissioned 
to take out another party in the " Kalmar Nyckel," 
and colonists were secured. Spiring and Blommaert 
once more advanced money, the ship was sent from 
Holland to Gottenburg in June, 1639, and a body of 
emigrants, with cattle, farming tools, etc., put on 
board. Lieut. Peter Hollandaer, a Dutchman, like 
Minuet, was assigned to command in Fort Christina, 
and the vessel sailed in early autumn. She leaked 
badly, however, proved unmanageable, and put into 
Medemblik, where Spiring removed Van Vliet from 
command, substituting Pouwel Jansen. These delays 
detained the expedition so long that it was not until 
February 7th that the "Kalmar Nyckel" finally 
sailed from the Texel. The date of his arrival was 
April 17, 1640. Hollandaer was in command at Chris- 
tina and many of his garrison were down with fever 
before November, when the third expedition came 
out. A letter of Governor Kieft's to the directors, 
under date of May 1st, states they were resolved to 
break up and come to Manhattan, but the day before 
their intended departure a vessel arrived to succor 
and strengthen them. 1 This and a subsequent letter 
of Kieft's shows that relations of courtesy were main- 
tained between the Dutch and Swedes, the former 
probably hoping and expecting to absorb the latter's 
settlement. The third expedition arrived in Novem- 
ber, in the ship " Fredenburg," Capt. Powelson, sent 
out from Holland under a Swedish commission of 
" Octroi and Privilegium," and bringing emigrants, 
cattle, etc., to " New Sweden." The charterers were 
Gothart de Rehden, De Horst, Fenland, and others, 
and they had a grant from the Swedish Company in 
return for these shipments. The grant was after- 
wards transferred to Henry Hockhammer & Co., who 
were to send out two or three vessels and found a new 
colony in New Sweden. They were to take up land 
on the north side of South River, at least four or five 
German miles below Fort Christina, and bring it 
in actual cultivation within ten years, and the land 
thus selected was to become allodial and hereditary 
property to them and their heirs and descendants. 
They were to prefer the Augsburg Confession of Faith 
in religion, but might profess the " pretended reformed 
religion," and the patroons of the colony were at all 
times bound to support " as many ministers and 
schoolmasters as the number of the inhabitants shall 
seem to require," choosing by preference for these 



1 Profeflsor Odhner, however, denies that there is any evidence of such 
distress as is alleged. 



offices men willing and capable of converting the 
savages. They were allowed to engage in every sort 
of industry, trade, and commerce with friendly powers, 
and were exempt from taxation for ten years. Jost 
van Bogardt, who came over in the " Fredenburg," 
appears to have been governor or executive of this 
colony, which some writers think was established 
on Elk River, in Maryland. This, however, is not 
probable. The grant under which the Hockhammer 
Company established their colony, and which bears 
the same date as the commissions of Capt. Powelson, 
expressly stipulated that they were to " limit their 
possessions to four or five German miles from Fort 
Christina." In the commission issued by the Swed- 
ish government to Capt. Printz as Governor of New 
Sweden, it is ordered that " those Hollanders who 
have emigrated to New Sweden and settled there 
under the protection of her Royal Majesty and the 
Swedish Crown, over whom Jost von dem Boyandh 2 
has command, the Governor shall treat according to 
the contents of the charter and privileges conferred by 
her Royal Majesty, of the principles whereof the 
Governor has been advised ; but in other respects he 
shall show them all good will and kindness, yet so 
that he shall hold them also to the same, that they 
also upon their side comply with the requisitions of 
their charter, which they have received. And, inas- 
much as notice has already been given them that they have 
settled too near to Fort Christina, and as houses are said 
to be built at the distance of almost three miles from that 
place, they should leave that place and betake them- 
selves to a somewhat greater distance from that fort." 
This entirely excludes the idea of a settlement on Elk 
River, and encourages the supposition that the neigh- 
borhood of the present city of New Castle, where 
Stuyvesant afterwards established Fort Casimir, was 
the place of this Dutch colony. It is certain that 
New Amstel, as the town near this fort came to be 
called, was the chief settlement of the Dutch on the 
Delaware after the overthrow of the Swedish power, 
and it seems natural that this circumstance should be 
due to the Hockhammer plantation. It has been 
conjectured that this Dutch settlement in New Swe- 
den under the patronage of the Swedish West India 
Company was undertaken on account of jealousies 
and ill feeling in Holland towards the Dutch West 
India Company, which was a very close monopoly. 
The grant given by the Swedish Company to the 
Hockhammer Company was much more liberal in its 
terms than could have been obtained from the Dutch 
West India Company. Bogardt was not only recog- 
nized as the commandant and governor of the new 
colony, but he also had a special commission from 
the Swedish government to act as its "general agent" 
on the Delaware River, and particularly to let no 
opportunity escape him " of sending to Sweden all 

2 This is the spelling of Acrelius. Dr. O'Callaghan, in his " History of 
New Netherlands," i. 366-67, says that the proper spelling of this man's 
name should be JooBt de Bogaerl. 



SWEDISH SETTLEMENTS ON THE DELAWARE. 



67 



information which may be useful to her Majesty and 
the Crown of Sweden." To encourage him in the 
performance of these duties he was paid a salary of 
five hundred florins per annum, with a promise of one 
hundred florins additional annual pay in case he 
should give sufficient proof of his attachment to the 
new service, and his zeal to promote the welfare of 
the Swedish crown. 

In this same year, 1640, the English began to make 
inroads upon the Delaware. They bought Indian 
lands on both sides of the river and bay, and in 1641 
commenced building trading-houses at Varkin's Kill, 
near the present Salem, N. J., settling sixty persons 
there from Connecticut, and the next year had the 
audacity to settle at the mouth of the Schuylkill. 
This was too much for the peppery Kieft, and even 
for his less excitable Council. Jan Jansen Ilpen- 
dam, commissary at Fort Nassau, was directed to 
expel the intruders, which he did without any cere- 
mony, seizing their goods and burning their trading- 
house. After this the Dutch fell upon the Salem 
settlement also and broke that up. 

Oxenstierna determined now to appoint a regular 
governor for New Sweden, and accordingly, in Au- 
gust, 1642, John Printz, a lieutenant-colonel of cav- 
alry, was selected to fill that office. His commission 
and instructions were carefully prepared, and armed 
with these he arrived in the Delaware early in 1643. 
Printz engaged to keep the new settlements safe from 
foreign and domestic enemies, to preserve amity, good 
neighborhood, and reciprocity with foreigners, with 
his own people, and the savages, and " to render jus- 
tice without distinction, so that there may be no in- 
jury to any man." He engaged to promote industry 
in every way ; and " as to himself, he will so conduct 
in his government as to be willing and able faithfully 
to answer for it before God, before us, and every brave 
Swede, regulating himself by the instructions given 
to him." These instructions bind him to take care 
of the frontiers of the country (which are minutely 
described) ; to maintain good relations with the Eng- 
lish at Varkin's Kill, and respect their title, unless 
they can be politely dispossessed without any disturb- 
ance; to keep on good terms with the Dutch, unless 
they show hostile intentions, but always to be on his 
guard with them, in view of their claims to the terri- 
tory occupied by the Swedes. He must deal with the 
savages with humanity and mildness, bringing them 
to believe that the Swedes have not, come there to do 
them injustice. He is to encourage agriculture and 
the fur trade, establish manufactures, and utilize the 
natural products of the country. Printz was ap- 
pointed to serve three years under these instructions, 
his salary being twelve hundred silver dollars a year. 
He was given two ships, soldiers and officers to assist 
him in executing his duties, and the people were 
ordered to obey and support him. 

Printz's chaplain, Rev. John Campanius Holm, the 
earliest chronicler of New Sweden, kept a journal of 



the voyage out, which consumed one hundred and fifty 
days, Fort Christina being reached on Feb. 5, 1643. 
From this journal the "History of New Sweden" was 
written afterwards by his grandson, Thomas Cam- 
panius Holm. The new governor, in the midst of so 
many rival claims and claimants, needed to exercise 
at least all the circumspection enjoined upon him 
by his instructions. He certainly showed energy, but 
whether prudence or not is another matter. His first 
step was to choose his official residence. This he 
planted upon Tinnecum Island, nearly opposite Fort 
Nassau, where he built Fort New Gottenburg, com- 
manding the approaches to the Dutch fort, and be- 
hind it erected a mansion for himself, called " Printz's 
Hall," with orchards, pleasure-house, etc., "all very 
handsome." We have spoken of the Dutch expelling 
the English from Varkin's Kill. But Printz aided 
them very materially in pulling their chestnuts out 
of the fire, nor did he do it in the courteous " under- 
hand" manner, while preserving the semblance of 
friendship, which his instructions enjoined upon him. 
Printz's ideas of tact and diplomacy resembled an 
elephant dancing. He was a bluff, coarse soldier, 
well described by the shrewd, observant, caustic Pie- 
tersen De Vries as " Captain Printz, who weighed 
four hundred pounds, and took three drinks at every 
meal." To deal with the English, Printz crossed the 
Delaware and planted a fort right alongside them on 
the opposite bank of Salem Creek. This fort, called 
"Elfsborg," " Elsingborg," or " Wootwessung," com- 
manded the channel of the Delaware, and enabled 
Printz to bring to all Dutch vessels or vessels of any 
other nationality passing up or down the river. 

This fort, which had a small garrison and mounted 
several guns, made De Vries halt before it and give 
an account of himself when, in 1643, he attempted to 
pass up South River in his sloop. The sturdy navi- 
gator, who had planted the first settlement on the Del- 
aware, must have felt a grim sense of the change in 
the times on being thus, as it were, barred from access 
to his own ancient threshold. Meantime the New 
Haven English sent down another expedition to the 
Delaware under the same Lamberton whom the Dutch 
had expelled from Varkin's Kill. His purpose was 
probably to revive that settlement, as the lands there 
had been bought from the Indians. While Lamber- 
ton's sloop was in the river near the mouth of the 
Schuylkill, Printz enticed him to Fort Gottenburg 
with two of his sailors, and cast them into prison, 
keeping them for three days, while he attempted to 
suboru the inferiors to testify that Lamberton was in- 
citing the Indians to rise against the Swedes. He re- 
sorted to the same device with John Wootlen, Lamber- 
ton's servant, making them all drunk and offering 
them heavy bribes of land and money. 1 The Eng- 
lishmen were firm, however, in their master's interest, 



1 This is the substance of depositions made by these men on their re- 
turn to New Haven. 



68 



HISTORY OP PHILADELPHIA. 



and could not be got to perjure themselves, though 
Printz put them in irons with his own hands. Lam- 
berton, however, was driven off, after paying a fine of 
beaver-skins and being roundly sworn at by the burly 
Swedish governor. 

Printz, however, was in some respects a good admin- 
istrator. He sustained his people in their determined 
resistance to the immigration of convicts and malefac- 
tors, who, when sent over by the home government, 
were not suffered to land, but compelled to return in 
the same ships that brought them. He. built the first 
water-mill on South River, at a place called Karakung, 
otherwise Water-Mill Stream (Amesland or Carkoen's 
Hook), on what is now Cobb's Creek, near the bridge 
on the Darby road at the old Blue Bell tavern. This 
was put up instead of the old wind-mill, which, 
Printz says, never would work and was " good for 
nothing." This mill ground both meal and flour, and 
found constant work. Printz had a military eye, and, 
as soon as his forts gave him command of the Dela- 
ware, he proceeded to close the Schuylkill entirely to 
the Dutch by a fortification at the mouth of that river 
(called Manayunk), one at Kingsessing, and another at 
Passayunk, called " Korsholm." He also put a stock- 
ade trading-house exactly alongside the Dutch fort of 
Beversrede, within a biscuit-toss of it, and between it 
and the water, so as to entirely destroy that fort's effi- 
ciency. The Dutch confessed that these works cut 
them off from the Minquas country and destroyed 
the fur trade. The Swedes, on the other hand, in 
1644 sent home two thousand one hundred and 
twenty-seven packages of beaver and seventy thou- 
sand four hundred and twenty-one pounds of tobacco. 

The " insolence of office" was fully developed in 
Printz. In 1645 the Dutch removed Jan Jansen Van 
Ilpendam, commissary at Fort Nassau, appointing 
Andreas Hudde in his place. Hudde was active and 
energetic, and he and Printz were soon in contro- 
versy, Hudde protesting against every act of the 
Swedes adverse to Dutch interests, and Printz either 
taking no notice of the protests or else responding 
to them by still ruder and more hostile actions. He 
ordered a Dutch trading-sloop away from the Schuyl- 
kill on pain of confiscation, and when Hudde came 
in person to protest, he was ordered off likewise. 
Kieft peremptorily instructed Hudde in 1646 to ac- 
quire some land from the Indians on the west shore, 
four miles north of Fort Nassau (on the ground now 
occupied by a part of Philadelphia). Hudde did as 
bidden, and the purchase being made he planted the 
company's arms on the premises. Printz at once 
sent Commissary Huygens to throw down the Dutch 
arms, whereupon Hudde arrested Huygens and put 
him in the guard-house, sending word to Printz that 
he must punish the commissary. Some correspond- 
ence ensued, when Printz answered Hudde's final 
protest and declaration of his company's rights by 
tossing the paper to an attendant, and seizing a 
musket as if to shoot the messenger, who, an honest 



Dutch sergeant, totally oblivious of the immunities 
of heralds, quickly made his escape. Printz now de- 
cided on non-intercourse with the Dutch, closed the 
Schuylkill to them entirely, sold the Indians arms 
and ammunition, and persecuted or expelled every 
Dutchman in New Sweden who would not take the 
oath of allegiance to Queen Christina. He stopped 
and searched Dutch vessels, and made Swedish ves- 
sels' go by Fort Nassau without showing their colors. 
In the winter of 1647-48 he even invaded Hudde's 
own private premises, and cut down his fruit- and 
shade-trees. Two members of the High Council of 
the New Netherlands came to the South River to 
investigate these outrages and find out the status of 
the Dutch and Swedish titles to the lands about the 
mouth of the Schuylkill. When they came to Fort 
Gottenburg, Printz's subordinates kept them waiting 
outside for half an hour in the rain. They were 
finally admitted, and delivered their protest. These 
councilors authorized private persons among the 
Dutch to make settlements on the Schuylkill. Ir» 
every case where the attempt was made to profit by 
this license Printz or some of his officers descended 
upon the settler and destroyed his property, besides 
often expelling the person himself with blows. The 
more Hudde protested the more violent Printz became. 
In 1647 the Dutch Director-General Kieft was suc- 
ceeded by Peter Stuyvesant, who began his adminis- 
I tration on May 27th. Printz found him a very different 




GOVERNOR PETER STUYVESANT. 

man from Kieft. When the two governors finally met 
in 1651, the Dutch director-general, while quite as 
soldierly, bluff, and irascible as Printz, showed him- 
self to be head and shoulders above the latter in 



SWEDISH SETTLEMENTS ON THE DELAWARE. 



69 



•diplomacy. During all these disputes and high- 
handed dealings in the period of Printz's adminis- 
tration, the Dutch had sedulously pursued the policy 
of acquiring, by public and private purchase, Indian 
titles to all the lands on both sides the Delaware from 
Salem and Christinaham up. The Swedes had lat- 
terly adopted the same policy, but with less success. 
Stuyvesant came to the South River in person in 
1651, "to preserve and protect the company's rights 
and jurisdiction." He sent proofs to Printz of the 
company's rights in the premises, and demanded in 
return that the Swedish governor should produce 
proof of what lands he had purchased and his 
authority to hold them. Printz could merely define 
the limits of his territory, and say that his papers 
were on file in the chancellory of Sweden. Then 
Stuyvesant is said to have detected Printz in an at- 
tempt to secretly buy title from an Indian sachem 
called Waspang Zewan, whereupon the Dutch gov- 
ernor forthwith dealt with the Indians himself, and 
was by them presented with a title to both sides of 
the Delaware from Christiana Creek to Bombay 
Hook, they at the same time denying that they had 
«ver sold any lands to the Swedes. Finally, Stuy- 
vesant determined that he would build another fort, 
Fort Nassau being too much out of the way, and in 
spite of Printz's protests he built Fort Casimir on 
the Delaware side of the river, about one Dutch mile 
from Fort Christina and near the present city of 
New Castle. Printz and Stuyvesant had several in- 
terviews with each other, and the final result was 
that " they mutually promised to cause no difficulties 
or hostility to each other, but to keep neighborly 
friendship and correspondence together, and act as 
friends and allies.'' 

It will be observed that all through these contro- 
versies, while there were many high words and some 
kicks and cuffs, the Dutch and Swedes never came 
to actual hostilities, and always maintained a modus 
vivendi with one another. This was not because they 
hated each other less, but because they dreaded a 
third rival more. Both Dutch and Swedes were ter- 
ribly apprehensive of English designs upon the Del- 
ware. As was laid down in the instructions to Gov- 
ernor Risingh, who succeeded Printz in New Sweden, 
speaking of the new Fort Casimir, if Risingh could 
not induce the Dutch to abandon the post by argu- 
ment and remonstrance and without resorting to hos- 
tilities, " it is better that our subjects avoid resorting 
to hostilities, confining themselves solely to protesta- 
tions, and suffer the Dutch to occupy the said fortress, 
than that it should fall into the hands of the English, 
who are the most powerful and of course the most danger- 
ous in that country." In the same way, after Stuyve- 
sant had met the English at Hartford, Conn., treated 
with them, and settled a mutual boundary line, so 
that all was apparently peace and friendship between 
the Dutch and the New Englanders, the New Haven 
•Company thought they would be permitted without 



i dispute to resume the occupancy of their purchased 
\ Indian lands on the New Jersey side of the Delaware 
! Bay at Salem, whence they had been twice expelled. 
: Accordingly, Jasper Graine, William Tuthill, and 
i other inhabitants of New Haven and Sotocket, to the 
number of about fifty, hired a vessel and sailed for that 
destination. On the way they considerately put into 
Manhattan to notify Stuyvesant of their errand, and 
consult with him as to the best way of accomplishing 
it. Stuyvesant took their commission away from 
them, clapped the master of the vessel and four 
others into prison, and refused to release them until 
" they pledged themselves under their hands" not to 
go to Delaware, informing them likewise that if any 
of them should afterwards be found there he would 
confiscate their goods and send them prisoners to 
Holland. At the same time he wrote to the gover- 
nor of New Haven that the Dutch rights on the Del- 
aware were absolute, and that he meant to prevent 
any English settlement there " with force of arms 
and martial opposition, even unto bloodshed." The 
Swedes were so much impressed with this firm attitude 
and with their own unprotected condition (this was 
probably during the interregnum between Printz's 
departure and the arrival of Risingh, when Pappe- 
goya, Printz's son-in-law, was acting governor, and 
there was no news from the mother-country) that they 
asked Stuyvesant to take them under his protection. 
The director-general declined to do so without in- 
struction from home, and the directors of the company 
when he consulted them left the matter to his owu 
discretion, simply suggesting that while population 
and settlement should be encouraged by all means as 
the bulwark of the State, it would be advisable that 
all settlers should yield allegiance to the parent 
State, and be willing to obey its laws and statutes in 
order to obtain protection. 

Printz sailed for home in October, 1653, and Ri- 
singh arrived out in May, 1654, their ships having 
probably passed each other on the ocean. Risingh 
was governor and commissary, and he was accom- 
panied by John Amundsen Besk, a captain of the 
navy, who seems to have been given command of the 
military of New Swedeu. The general management 
of Swedish affairs on the Delaware had now passed to 
the charge of the " General College of Commerce" of 
Stockholm. Risingh (his Christian name was John 
Claudii) had also Peter Lindstrom, a military engi- 
neer, on his staff, with a clergyman, and they brought 
out two or three hundred settlers. Risingh's instruc- 
tions were all for peace, not war ; but even before he 
arrived at Christiana, or Gottenburg, he struck a bold 
stroke for war. The ship in which he sailed ou its 
way up the Delaware came in sight of Fort Casimir 
on the 31st of May. Tienhoven and others in the 
fort, being sent out to speak the stranger, reported 
that the new Swedish governor was on board and 
demanded the surrender of the fort as standing upon 
Swedish territory. Gerrit Bikker, the commander, 



70 



HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA. 



made no preparations for defense ; he could not un- 
derstand nor believe the Swedish intention to be hos- 
tile. Soon Capt. Swensko, of the ship, with twenty 
armed men, landed, advanced upon the fort, and while 




FORT CASIMIR OR TRINITY FORT. 
[From Campanius' " New Sweden."] 

the Dutch ran to meet them as friends, entered 
through the open sally-port, and being in possession 
demanded the fort's surrender at the point of the bayo- 
net. Bikker and Tienhoven sent two commissioners 
aboard the ship to demand an explanation, but 
Amundsen fired two guns over the fort, and the 
Swedish soldiers at once seized the Dutch, disarmed 
and ejected them with the least possible ceremony. 
The Swedes were thus for the moment, and in the 
most surprising way, supreme on the South River. 

Risingh named his new conquest Fort Trinity, be- 
cause the capture was made on Trinity Sunday ; 
strengthened the fort, and immediately called the 
neighboring Indians together with a view to make 
them his allies. The j oint council was held at Tinne- 
cum on June 17th, and Risingh offered many pres- 
ents, distributed wine and spirits, and spread a great 
feast of suppaun ; the old treaties were read, mutual 
vows of friendship exchanged, and the Indians be- 
came allies of the Swedes, whom they strongly coun- 
seled to settle at once at Passayunk. 

The Dutch and Swedish population on the Dela- 
ware at this time, according to a census taken by 
Risingh, was three hundred and sixty-eight persons. 
This is probably exclusive of many Swedes who had 
gone into the interior and crossed the ridge towards 
Maryland. But little agriculture was attended to 
besides tobacco planting, and the chief industry was 
the trade in peltries, which was very profitable. In 
this trade the Indians had acquired as great skill as 
in trapping the beaver and drying his pelt. The price 
of a beaver-skin was two fathoms of "seawant," and 



each fathom was taken to be three ells long. An ell 
was measured (as the yard still is in country places) 
from one corner of the mouth to the thumb of the 
opposite arm extended. The Indians, tall and long- 
limbed, always sent their longest-armed people to dis- 
pose of beaver-skins, and the Dutch complained at 
Fort Nassau that the savages outmeasured them con- 
tinually. 

It was not to be expected that a man of Stuy- 
vesant's heady temperament would permit an outrage 
such as the capture of Fort Casimir to go unrevenged, 
even if the directors of the West India Company had 
passed it by. But they were quite as eager as Stuy- 
vesant himself for prompt and decisive action on the 
Delaware. The time was auspicious for them. Axel 
Oxenstierna, the great Swedish chancellor, was just 
dead, Queen Christina had abdicated the throne in 
favor of her cousin Charles Gustavus, and England and 
Holland had just signed a treaty of peace. The direc- 
tors insisted upon the Swedes being effectually pun- 
ished, and ordered Stuyvesant not only to exert every 
nerve to revenge the injury, not only to recover the fort 
and restore affairs to their former situation, but to 
drive the Swedes from every side of the river, and 
allow no settlers except under the Dutch flag. He was 
promised liberal aid from home, and was ordered to 
press any vessel into his service that might be in the 
New Netherlands. Stuyvesant meanwhile was not idle 
on his own side. He had captured and made prize 
of a Swedish vessel that came into the North River 
almost as soon as he heard the news from Fort Casimir. 
He received five armed vessels from Amsterdam. He 
ordered a general fasting and prayer, and then hast- 
ened to set his armaments in order. On the 12th of 
September his forces were off the late Fort Casimir, 
now Fort Trinity, — seven ships and six hundred men. 
The fort was summoned to surrender. The garrison, 
under Capt. Sven Schute, was small, not over thirty 
or forty men, and their commander surrendered them, 
on honorable terms before a gun was fired. Stuyve- 
sant marched at once to Fort Christina, where 
Risingh was in command, and invested it on every 
side. Risingh pretended great surprise, resorted to 
every little diplomatic contrivance he could think of, 
and then surrendered also, before the Dutch batteries 
opened. In truth his fort was a weak and defenseless 
one, and he had scarcely two rounds of ammunition. 
The Dutch went up the river to Tinnecum, where 
they burnt Fort Gottenburg and wrung the necks of 
Mrs. Pappagoya's ducks and turkeys. A great many 
Swedes came in and took the oath of allegiance to 
the Dutch. All such were suffered to remain undis- 
turbed in their possessions. A few who refused to 
take the oath were transported to Manhattan, while 
others crossed into Maryland and permanently settled 
in Cecil and Kent Counties, where their family names- 
are still preserved ; but the Dutch yoke undoubtedly 
sat very lightly upon Swedish shoulders. 

This was the end of Swedish rule on the Delaware. 



SWEDISH SETTLEMENTS ON THE DELAWARE. 



71 



Stuy vesant, obeying instructions from the West India 
Company, made a formal tender of redelivery of Fort 
Christina to Risingh, but that hero was in the sulks, 
refused to receive it, and went home by way of New 
Amsterdam, swearing at the Dutch " in frantic mood." 




Then Stuyvesant appointed Capt. Derrick Schmidt 
as commissary, who was quickly succeeded by John 
Paul Jacquet, in the capacity of " Vice-Director of 
the South River," with a Council consisting of An- 
dreas Hudde, vice-director, Elmerhuysen Klein, and 
two sergeants. Fort Christina became Altona, Fort 
Casimir resumed its old name, and a settlement grew 
up around it which was named New Amstel, the first 
actual town upon the river. It must be confessed that 
if the Swedes on the Delaware were not a happy 
people it was their own fault. But they were happy. 
Come of a primitive race not yet spoiled by fashions, 
luxury, and the vices of civilization, and preferring 
agriculture and the simplest arts of husbandry to 
trade, they found themselves in a new, beautiful, and 
fertile region, with the mildest of climates and the 
kindliest of soils. Government, the pressure of laws, 
the weight of taxation they scarcely knew, and their 
relations were always pleasant, friendly, and intimate 
with those savage tribes the terror of whose neighbor- 
hood drove the English into sudden atrocities and 



barbarities. Very few Swedes ever lost a night's rest 
because of the Indian's war-whoop. They were a 
people of simple ways, industrious, loyal, steadfast. 
In 1693 some of these Delaware Swedes wrote home 
for ministers, books, and teachers. This letter says, 
" As to what concerns our situation in this country, 
we are for the most part husbandmen. We plow 
and sow and till the ground ; and as to our meat and 
drink, we live according to the old Swedish custom. 
This country is very rich and fruitful, and here grow 
all sorts of grain in great plenty, so that we are richly 
supplied with meat and drink ; and we send out yearly 
to our neighbors on this continent and the neighbor- 
ing islands bread, grain, flour, and oil. We have 
here also all sorts of beasts, fowls, and fishes. Our 
wives and daughters employ themselves in spinning 
wool and flax and many of them in weaving ; so that 
we have great reason to thank the Almighty for his 
manifold mercies and benefits. God grant that we 
may also have good shepherds to feed us with his holy 
word and sacraments. We live also in peace and 
friendship with one another, and the Indians have not 
molested us for many years. Further, since this 
country has ceased to be under the government of 
Sweden, we are bound to acknowledge and declare 
for the sake of truth that we have been well and 
kindly treated, as well by the Dutch as by his Ma- 
jesty the King of England, our gracious sovereign; 
on the other hand, we, the Swedes, have been and 
still are true to him in words and in deeds. We have 
always had over us good and gracious magistrates; 
and we live with one another in peace and quiet- 
ness." x 

One of the missionaries sent over in response to the 
touching demand of which the above quoted passage 
is part, writing back to Sweden after his arrival, says 
that his congregation are rich, adding, " The country 
here is delightful, as it has always been described, 
and overflows with every blessing, so that the people 
live very well without being compelled to too much 
or too severe labor. The taxes are very light ; the 
farmers, after their work is over, live as they do in 
Sweden, but are clothed as well as the respectable 
inhabitants of the towns. They have fresh meat and 
fish in abundance, and want nothing of what other 
countries produce ; they have plenty of grain to make 
bread, and plenty of drink. There are no poor in 
this country, but they all provide for themselves, for 
the land is rich and fruitful, and no man who will 
labor can suffer want." All this reads like an idyl 
of Jean Paul, or one of the naive, charming poems 
of Bishop Tegner. It is a picture, some parts of 
which have been delightfully reproduced by the poet 
John G. Whittier in his " Pennsylvania Pilgrim." 

* Annals of the Swedes on the Delaware. By Rev. J. C. Clay, D.D. 



72 



HISTORY OP PHILADELPHIA. 



CHAPTEE VI. 

THE PLANTING OP PHILADELPHIA. 

The Swedes have no further right to a distinc- 
tive place in this work, except so far as individuals 
of that nation took up land within the boundaries or 
contributed to form the heterogeneous population of 
Philadelphia ; nor is there need to say anything more 
about the Dutch of New Netherland, beyond the few 
meagre particulars in which their ordinances or regu- 
lations are found to bear upon that part of the 
country bordering on the Delaware River within the 
limits of which Philadelphia is now seated. Shortly 
after the surrender of Forts Casimir and Christina, a 
Swedish ship, the "Mercury," arrived in the Dela- 
ware with a large number of immigrants aboard. The 
Dutch refused permission for this vessel to pass the 
(ort, but while the principals were conducting a long 
diplomatic correspondence on the subject, John 
Papegoya, Printz's son-in-law, with a party of In- 
dians, boarded the vessel, piloted her up to Christina 
and Tinnecum, and before Stuyvesant and his agents 
had reached their final unalterable determination to 
send all the immigrants incontinently back to Sweden, 
they had got ashore, bag and baggage, and were ab- 
sorbed in the rest of the population. This was the 
last body of immigrants from Sweden to the Delaware. 
It was a favorite project of the director-general of 
New Netherland and his satellites, tried over and 
over again, to compel the Swedes and Finns to con- 
gregate together in one or two settlements or "reser- 
vations," and the order went forth several times to 
effect this, but it could not be enforced, nor, indeed, 
was there any serious attempt made to enforce it. 
A favorite place for this compulsory settlement with 
the Dutch executive was the Indian seat of Passa- 
yunk, and had the Swedes been congregated there 
from all parts of the colony some distinctive impress 
of their character would perhaps even to-day be de- 
tected in that part of Philadelphia, just as the Mora- 
vian traits are still discoverable in and around Beth- 
lehem. The Swedes and Finns, however, preferred to 
settle where they chose, and a good many of them, 
fearing they would be excluded from this privilege 
in the South River colony, crossed the border into 
Maryland, where many traces of them are still to be 
found in Cecil and Kent Counties. 

This policy of the Dutch, however, and the nat- 
ural aversion of races speaking different languages 
to coalesce, did have the effect to separate the Dutch 
and Swedes so far that while the former collected 
about Fort Casimir, now called New Amstel, and 
points lower down the river, the Swedes gravitated 
towards points farther up the Delaware River than 
their original settlement at Christiana. " Upland," 
now Chester, became one of their favorite foci ; they 
took land on the creek in the rear of Printz's domain 
at Tinnecum ; they followed up Cobb's Creek beyond 



the mill, and had farms on all the streams flowing 
from the west into the Schuylkill ; they crossed that 
river and, with their church at Wicaco, established 
their domiciles in several parts of the peninsula em- 
braced between the Schuylkill and the Delaware. 
Thus it happened that nearly all the original settlers 
upon the present site of Philadelphia, nearly all the 
original lund-holders, — in distinction to land-Burners, 
— were Swedes, and William Penn found this to be 
still the case when he came to lay off his city. 

It is now time to say something about these first 
planters upon the ground which is now traversed by 
so many long streets and bears the weight of so many 
stately buildings. A great many Indian names have 
been preserved in and around Philadelphia. The 
form and spelling have changed or vary, but the orig- 
inal sound is essentially preserved. In Roggeveen's 
map of New Netherland, published in 1676, the site 
of Penn's Philadelphia is marked "Sauno," and this 
is believed to have been a Dutch name for the Sanki- 
kans Indians. All the other sites on the South River 
part of this map bear Dutch or Swedish names. In 
Lindstrom's map of " Nya Swerige," drawn 1654-55, 
and republished to accompany Campanius' history, 
1702, the Indian or Swedish names are the only 
ones given. There is Stillen's land (the Stille prop- 
erty), Tenna Kongz Kjlen (Tennakonk Creek), Fri- 
men's Kjlen (or Darby Creek), Boke Kjlen (Bow 
Creek), Apoquenenia, Ornebo Kjlen, Skiar elle linde 
Kjlen (Schuylkill), Nitlaba Konck, Passajong (Pas- 
sayunk), Wichqua Going (Wicaco), Chingihamong, 
Fackenland, Asoepek, Alaskius Kjlen (or Frankford 
Creek), Penichpaska Kjlen, Drake Kjlen, Poanqiis- 
sing (Poquessing), etc. In Ferris' conjectural map 
of early settlements we have Darby Creek, Tenac- 
konk's Kil, Karakung Creek, Nittaba Kenck, Pas- 
saiung, Wicaco, Sculkil, Coaquanock (which was the 
Philadelphia laid out by Penn), Fackenland, Franck- 
ford Creek, Penichpaska Kil, Poatquissing, Nesham- 
iny, etc. The original name for nearly every one of 
these is extant in the old deeds and records. The 
Indian names for streams which are still partially or 
wholly retained are Minquas Creek (Darby, Cobb's 
Creek), Poquessin, Pennypack, Sissinokisink, Tacony, 
Wingohocking, Cohocksink, Wissahiccon,Manayunk, 
etc. Now the Swedes were the original settlers on 
nearly all the lands between Bow Creek and Poques- 
sing. 

The first claim of purchase of Indian title to lands 
within the fork of the Schuylkill and the Delaware 
is that of the Dutch, who insist that Arendt Corssen 
bought for them from the Indians the site of Fort 
Beversrede in 1633. The deed for this land, however, 
was not recorded until 1648. Between those dates, 
under the guidance of Andreas Hudde, several Dutch- 
men attempted to plant themselves on the east side 
of the Schuylkill, but they were not allowed to do so 
by the Swedes as long as Printz and Risingh were in 
power. The Swedes claim to have bought all the 



THE PLANTING OF PHILADELPHIA. 



73 



land on the west bank of the Dela- 
ware, from Cape Henlopen to the 
falls of the river at Trenton, in 1638. 
This the Dutch and some of their 
Indian allies denied, yet the pur- 
chase was more than likely made as 
stated. Printz said the deeds and 
records were in the archives at 
Stockholm, wherej according to 
Rudman, Israel Helm, an original 
Swede settler, who came over with 
Minuet or Hollandaer, and was 
afterwards a leading man in the 
country and a magistrate under the 
Dutch rule, claims to have seen them 
himself. The fact of the purchase 
is also plainly set forth in the of- 
ficial instructions and credentials of 
Printz, given to him by the Swedish 
"West India Company, by Christina, 
Oxenstierna, and nine other lead- 
ing men of the nobility of the 
kingdom. Peter Stuyvesant also 
claimed an Indian title to the lands 
east of the Schuylkill, by deed of 
gift, after his quarrels with Gover- 
nor Printz had ripened. 

But the first patents to particu- 
lar tracts of land within the metes 
and bounds set forth were given to 
Swedes, who also made the first ac- 
tual settlements. There can be no 
better evidence of this than the sim- 
ple names of the persons whose 
property was secured to them when 
they could renew their patents in 
the days when Lovelace and An- 
dross confirmed the English do- 
minion on the Delaware after the 
conquest of New Netherland. A 
few of these patents, purchases, and 
settlements deserve to be referred 
to in a particular manner. In 1645, 
Andreas Hudde, the Dutch com- 
missary on the Delaware, a, careful 
and conscientious observer, reports' 
plantations of the Swedes from 
Christiana along the Delaware for 
two Dutch miles up the river to a 
point near to Tinnecum. Then 
there is not a single plantation " till 
you come to Schuylkill." This is 
perfectly intelligible if we remem- 
ber that the Swedes chose for their 
plantations firm ground only, and 
always near the water-front if pos- 
sible. The above would then read: 
"The Swedish plantations extend 
nine and a half English miles 




74 



HISTORY OP PHILADELPHIA. 



along the Delaware above Christiana ; then there is 
an unoccupied tract of swamp for about ten miles, 
until the Swedish plantations on the western and 
eastern banks of the Schuylkill are reached." And 
Hudde himself furnishes the proof of the existence 
of such plantations in his account (1648) of the trans- 
actions attending the raising of his house on the fort 
grounds at Beversrede, at the same time that he shows 
that up to that time the Dutch had not put up a 
single building above the mouth of the Schuylkill. 
Three years before that date the Swedes had built 
a water-mill on the Karakung, or Cobb's Creek, and 
a fort or trading block-house on Manayunk Island, 
in the mouth of the Schuylkill, as well as another 
apparently at Kingsessing. The alleged first pur- 
chase of the Dutch east of the Schuylkill was made 
from Indian sachems on the New Jersey side of the 
Delaware. The second, by Hudde, in 1646, which 
Printz resisted, was from an Indian living on the 
spot ; the third, also by Hudde, in 1648, was ratified 
by Maarte Hoock and Wissementes, sachems of the 
Passayunk Indians. In Hudde's own account of this 
he says he called in the sachems, and they gave the 
Swedes, " who lived there already," notice to leave 
their settlements on the Schuylkill. In the contro- 
versy, or rather squabble, which ensued, and which 
Hudde seems to report with the utmost fidelity, the 
sachems are represented as demanding by whose orders 
the Swedes did erect buildings there; "if it was 
not enough that they were already in possession of 
Mateunakonk, the Schuylkill, Kingsessing, Kakauken, 
Upland," etc. " They [the Swedes] arrived only lately 
on the river, and had already taken so much land 
from them, which they had actually settled, while they 
[the Dutch], pointing to them, had never taken from 
them any land, although they had dwelt here and con- 
versed with them more than thirty years." This is 
very strong affirmative evidence to the fact that up 
to 1648 the Swedes had, and the Dutch had not, set- 
tled on land east of the Schuylkill. In that year the 
latter built Fort Beversrede, and the Swedes planted 
a block-house directly in front of it, closing its gates. 
Under the circumstances the Swedes would seem to 
be justified in this action and in that of the previous 
year, when they threw down Symon Root's house at 
Wigquakoing (or Wicaco), or in 1648 prevented the 
Dutch freemen from building at "Mast-makers' Cor- 
ner," on the east side of the Schuylkill. 

Campanius, the Swedish pastor, returned home in 
May, 1648. At that time, he says, the Swedes had 
settlements at Mecoponacka ("Upland," or "Ches- 
ter"), at Passayunk, on the Schuylkill, where was a fort 
named Korsholm, and a plantation given under Queen 
Christina's own hand to Lieut. Sven Schute. 1 At 



i This conveyance, however, was not made until Aug. 20, 1653. The 
tract was called " Mockorhulteykil," "as far -is the river, with the small 
island belonging thereto viz., the island of Karinge, and Kiusessing, 
.comprehending also Passuming" (Passayunk). This land, the title to 



Kingsessing, reports Campanius, already dwell five 
freemen, " who cultivate the ground and lived well." 
This plantation was east of Cobb's Creek, near the 
Swedes' mill. Techoherassi was Olof Stille's place, 
on the Delaware near the mouth of Ridley's Creek, 
and below Tinnecum and Fort Gottenburg. Stille, 
an original Swedish colonist, sold to the clergyman, 
Laurentius Carolus, and then settled in Moyamensing, 
where he took up swamp lands in 1678. In 1651 the 
Dutch made repeated efforts to settle on the island of 
Harommuny, or Aharommuny (which Dr. Smith, in his 
History of Delaware County, places on the Delaware, 
between Bow Creek and the Schuylkill), but were 
driven off, and in 1669 this land was patented with 
other tracts to Peter Cock, a prominent Swede under 
the Dutch rule, magistrate, commissioner, collector 
of customs, etc. On the same day in 1653 that Queen 
Christiana gave the deed of Wicaco to Sven Shute, she 
also gave to naval commander John Amundsen Besk 
a deed for "a tract of land extending to Upland Kill." 
In 1658 we find the Dutch Director Alrichs coveting 
and very anxious to get control both of Cock's land 
and Schute's also. In a letter to the Commissioner 
of Amsterdam he speaks of " two parcels of the best 
land on the river on the west bank, the first of which 
is above Marietie's Hook, about two leagues along 
the river and four leagues into the interior; the 
second, on a guess, about three leagues along the 
same, including Schuylkil, Passajonck, Quinsessingh, 
right excellent land, the grants or deeds whereof, 
signed in original by Queen Christina, I have seen." 
He thinks this land could be bought cheaply. In 
fact, these two tracts, if of the dimensions which 
Alrichs accorded them, were larger than the whole of 
Philadelphia County. Passayunk, as confirmed in 
1667 by Governor Nicholls and granted to the Ash- 
mans, Carman, Williams, etc., was surveyed to con- 
tain one thousand acres, and the quit-rent was fixed 
at ten bushels of wheat every year. That was cer- 
tainly cheap enough. In 1664, Governor D'Hinoyossa 
repatented the Sven Schute tract to his heirs, Sven 
Swensen, Sven Gondersen, Oele Swensen, and An- 
dries Swensen, as eight hundred acres, beginning at 
Moyamensing Kill and so stretching upwards. In 
1676, Governor Andross patented to Jurian Hartsfelder 
three hundred and fifty acres on Cohocksink's Creek 
for three and a half bushels of wheat quit-rent. This 
was sold ten years afterwards to Daniel Pegg, who 
gave the name of Pegg's Creek or Bun to the stream, 
and this tract formed the Northern Liberties of Phila- 
delphia. Some of it was marsh, and often flooded. 
In 1675 the block-house at Wicaco, built in 1669 as a 
defense against the Indians, was turned into a Swedish 
Church, Gloria Dei, and Fabricius, the pastor, preached 
his first sermon there on Trinity Sunday. 

In 1677 the patents for land within the present 

which was several times confirmed to the Swenaons, Shnte's heirB, in- 
cluded Wicaco, and Penn,\vhen he laid out his city in 1682, had to give 
the Swensons other lands in exchange for this valuable tract. 




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or 



THE PLANTING OF PHILADELPHIA. 



75 



limits of Philadelphia were very numerous, nearly 
all to Swedes, and for settlement and cultivation: 
Jan Schouten, 100 acres, west side of Schuylkill; 
Richard Duckett, west side, 100 acres ; John Mattson, 
Swen Lorn, and Lacey Dalbo, 300 acres on Schuylkill, 
at Wiessakitkonk, on the west side opposite Wissa- 
hickon ; Thomas Jacobse, Neshaminies, next above, 
300 acres ; Lacey Cock and James Sanderling, each 
100 acres on Poequissing Creek ; Capt. Hans Moens, 
on Penipake Creek, on side of the same, 300 acres; 
Benjamin Goodsen, 100 acres, adjoining Duckett on 
Schuylkill ; Ephraim Herman and Peter Rambo, 300 
acres, between Pennepacker Creek and Poequessing 
Creek, promising to seat the same. 1 The same year 
Peter Rambo takes up 250 acres between Wicaco and 
Hartfelder's land, but two years later is compelled to 
surrender it to the Swensens, whose patent covers it. 
This tract was Kuequenaku (Coaquanock), the centre 
and navel of Penn's original Philadelphia ; Lars Col- 
man, Pell Laerson, and Peter Erickson also get 300 acres 
near Falls of Schuylkill, and Israel Helm 200 acres 
"up the river.'' In 1678 there are grants on Schuylkill 
made, as follows : Peter Rambo and Pelle Rambo, 200 
acres, east side ; Andreis Banksen, 200 acres ; John 
and Andreis Wheeler, 300 acres ; Andreis Johnson, 
200 acres ; Lasse Dalbo, 100 acres, east side ; Lasse 
Andreis, Oele Stille, and John Mattsen, of Moya- 
mensing, each take up 25 acres of marsh or meadow 
between Hollandaer's and Rosamond's Kills, east side 
of Schuylkill ; Peter Dalbo and Oele Swansen getting 
like quantities in the same vicinity; 200 acres are 
granted to Thomas Nossicker, and 100 to William 
Warner, who settled, it is said, on east side of Schuyl- 
kill as early as 1658. There were grants also of 250 
acres on Neshaminy Creek to Dunck Williams and 
Edmund Draufton and son ; 300 acres at Sachamax- 
ing from Lawrence Cock to Elizabeth Kinsey, and 
Sir R. Carr shows a deed, dated 1673, for a church- 
house and garden in Kingsessing. 2 

Penn's original plans were for a city of 10,000 acres. 
There are 82,603 acres in the limits of Philadelphia. 
In the list above given, defective as it is, and cutting 
all grants down to their minimum, it is shown that 
5400 acres of this land was patented and the most of 
it occupied between 1640 and 1680. The greater part 
of this rapid development, which began with grants 
of league-wide tracts and ended with petitions for 
twenty-five-acre lots of submerged marsh and swamp, 
occurred after the Dutch power had ceased upon the 
Delaware River. Security came in with English rule, 
and it was fostered by capital and enterprise. 

The circumstances which led to the overthrow of the 
Dutch in the New Netherlands do not demand any 
long recital. The facts are few, and there is no stir- 

1 The accounts of these deeds may he found in various places in Haz- 
ard's Annals, Smith's History of Delaware County, Ferris' " Early 
Settlements," etc. 

2 The irregular spelling of names in the text is a reflection of the old 
records, where every deed almost shows variations. 



ring episode in connection with them. No revolution 
could have been more tame, no transfer of an empire 
more apathetic. The Dutch had always had the sa- 
gacity to know that the English were their worst 
enemies in this continent. New Netherland lay like 
a wedge between Virginia and New England, sepa- 
rating and weakening those colonies, while at the 
same time it kept both from access to the best soils, 
the most desirable and salubrious climates, and the 
boldest navigable waters in America. From the time 
of Lord Baltimore's settlement on the Chesapeake 
(1634), the pressure which the Dutch felt so much 
upon their eastern frontier was repeated with an 
added strain on the southern. Baltimore's charter 
called for all the land north of the Potomac and 
south of the fortieth parallel. This line would have 
included the present site of Philadelphia, and Balti- 
more was urgent in asserting his claim. He sent Col. 
Nathaniel Utie to New Amstel (now New Castle) to 
give notice of his rights and how he meant to enforce 
them, and his ambassador went among the simple- 
hearted, timid Dutch and Swedes like a hectoring 
constable armed with a distraint warrant. Utie and 
others assisted the Indians who were at war with 
those tribes who were clients and allies of the Dutch, 
and Fendall and Calvert repeatedly made it appear 
that they meant to invade the South River colony 
and overthrow the Dutch power, either by sailing in 
at the mouth of the Delaware or by an invasion over- 
land by way of Elk River. So great was the pressure 
put upon them that the Dutch abandoned their set- 
tlements about the Horekills and withdrew farther 
up the bay. As a further precaution and to erect " a 
wall between them and the English of Maryland," 
the Dutch West India Company ceded to the city 
of Amsterdam, to which it owed heavy debts, its 
entire jurisdiction over the South River colony. 

But the English to be dreaded did not live in the 
colonies but at home. The Stuarts were in power 
again, and so greedy were they and their followers 
after their long fast during the period of the Com- 
monwealth and the Protectorate, that England, 
though clean stripped, did not furnish spoils enough 
to "go round." Charles II., moreover, had no liking 
for the Dutch, and it had already become the policy 
of Great Britain to obtain control of the North 
American continent. On March 12, 1664 (O. S.), 
the king granted to his brother James, Duke of York 
and Albany (afterwards King James II.), a patent 
for all the land embraced between the St. Croix 
River on the north and the Delaware Bay on the 
south. This covered all of New England, New York, 
and New Jersey, but it did not include the west side 
of the Delaware River and Bay, showing clearly that 
the king respected his father's charter conveying 
this territory to Calvert. All of the land granted by 
this patent, from the St. Croix River to the Passaic, 
had been previously conceded to the Plymouth or 
North Virginia Company in 1589 by King James I. 



76 



HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA. 



The duke, in July, sold or granted the territory be- 
tween the Hudson and Delaware Eivers — the whole 
of New Jersey, in fact— to Lord Berkeley and Sir 
George Carteret. War between the English and 
Dutch broke out two months after the Duke of York 
received his patent, and the latter, who was lord high 
admiral of the British navy, at once (May 25th, O. S.) 
fitted out an expedition to capture the New Nether- 
lands, — in other words, to take possession of the 
country patented to him by his brother. The expe- 
dition, consisting of four vessels, with one hundred 
and twelve guns and three hundred soldiers, besides 
the ships' crews, was under command of Col. Richard 
Nichols, who was accompanied by Sir Kobert Carr, 
Kt., George Cartwright, and Samuel Maverick, com- 
missioners to the several English colonies to hear 
complaints, redress grievances, and settle the "peace 
and security of the country." Their instructions 
bound them first to reduce the Dutch colonies, as 
the fountain of sedition and sanctuary of discontent 
and mutiny, to " an entire obedience." The mas- 
sacres of Amboyna were cited in proof that the 
Dutch were not fit to be intrusted with great power, 
and it was declared to be "high time to put them 
■without a capacity of doing the same mischief in 
America, by reducing them to the same rule and 
obedience with the English subjects there." Sub- 
mission to English authority was all that was to be 
required of them, and no man who submitted was to 
be "disturbed or removed from what he possessed." 

The Dutch, both at home and in New Netherland, 
were acquainted with the expedition and its objects, 
but took no real measures of defense. The first ves- 
sel of the expedition arrived at the outer bay of New 
Amsterdam August 25th, and a proclamation was at 
once issued, offering protection to all who submitted. 
Stuyvesant repaired the walls of his fort, but he could 
not rally the people to reinforce the garrison. They 
would not leave their villages and boueries, their wives 
and children, upon any such venture. On the 30th, 
Col. Nichols demanded the surrender of the fort and 
island, replying to Stuyvesant's commissioners that 
he was not there to argue questions of title, but to 
obey orders, and the place must surrender to him 
without debate, or he would find means to compel it 
to do so. Stuyvesant was still disposed to argue, to 
temporize, to fight if he could, but the frigate ran up 
alongside the fort, broadside on, and demanded an 
immediate surrender. The people assembled in town- 
meeting and declared their helplessness, the dominies 
and the old women laid siege to Stuyvesant, and on 
the 9th of September, 1664, New Amsterdam surren- 
dered, the Dutch marching out of their fort with all 
their arms, drums beating, and colors flying. The 
terms of the capitulation were very liberal, consider- 
ing that no defense was possible. In fact, the English 
did not want any war. They sought territory, and 
they knew that that takes half its value from being 
in a pacific state. 



After arranging affairs at New Amsterdam, the 
name of which was now changed to New York, Sir 
Eobert Carr, with two frigates and some soldiers, was 
sent to the Delaware to receive the submission of the 
Dutch there. They reached New Amstel on Septem- 
ber 30th. The inhabitants at once yielded, but the 
truculent D'Hinoyossa, with Alricks and Van Swer- 
ingen, threw himself into the fort and declined to come 
to terms. Carr landed some troops, made his frigates 
pour two broadsides into the fortress, and then incon- 
tirently took it by storm, the Dutch losing three men 
killed and ten wounded, the English none. The re- 
sult of D'Hinoyossa's foolhardiness was the sack of 
the fort, the plunder of the town, the confiscation of 
the governor's property, as well as that of several of 
his supporters, and the selling of the Dutch soldiers 
into Virginia as slaves. A good many negro slaves 
also were confiscated and sold, a cargo of nearly three 
hundred of these unhappy beings having just landed 
at South Amboy and been run across the Delaware 
with the idea of escaping the English in New York. 
The name of New Amstel was changed to New Castle, 
and D'Hinoyossa retired to Maryland, where he was 
naturalized and lived for several years in Talbot 
County, but finally finding he could not recover his 
property, which had been taken by Carr and others, 
he returned to Holland, entered the Dutch army, and 
fought in the wars against Louis XIV. 

In May, 1667, Nichols was superseded by Sir Fran- 
cis Lovelace as governor of the Dutch settlements on 
the North and South Bivers, and in July of that year 
peace was made between the Dutch and English on 
the basis of the uti possedetis. In August, 1669, some 
disturbance arose on the Delaware in consequence of 
the conduct of a Swede called "the long Finn," who 
gave himself out as the son of General Count Konigs- 
mark, made seditious speeches, and tried to incite some 
sort of a rebellion. He is thought to have had the 
countenance, if not the active support, of Printz's 
daughter, Armgart Pappegoya. He was arrested, put 
in irons, tried, convicted, and sentenced to be publicly 
whipped, branded on the face and breast, and sent to 
the Barbadoes to be sold, all of which was done as set 
forth. 

In 1673 war again broke out between the Dutch 
and English in consequence of the malign influence 
of Louis XIV. upon Charles II. The French king 
invaded the Netherlands with two hundred thousand 
men, and there was a series of desperate naval bat- 
tles between the combined French and English fleets, 
with one hundred and fifty ships, and the Dutch fleet 
of seventy-five vessels, under De Buyter and the 
younger Tromp. The last of these battles, fought off 
the Helder, resulted in the defeat of the allied squad- 
rons, and the Prince of Orange at once dispatched sev- 
eral vessels under Binckes and the gallant Evertsen to 
recover possession of New Netherlands. The British 
made but little resistance, while the Dutch welcomed 
their old friends. Lovelace fled, and in a few days the 




atyl&tfflL 



' ■ ■ /■/,'■ : M /.//■' V :,;/ 



WILLIAM PENN. 



77 



Dutch had resumed control of all their old provinces 
in North America. Capt. Anthony Colve was made 
governor. There were a few administrative changes. 
A confiscation act was passed against the English 
king and his officers. In 1674, February 10th (0. S.)> 
the treaty of Westminster was signed, and peace again 
made between the Dutch and English, with a proviso 
enforcing the restitution of all countries taken during 
the late war. Under this treaty the English resumed 
their conquests of 1664. The Duke of York's patents 
were renewed, and the duke appointed Sir Edmund 
Andross governor over the whole country from the 
west side of the Connecticut River to the east side of 
the Delaware. Andross arrived out November 10th, 
and at once proceeded to restore the statu quo ante hel- 
ium as far as hecould. He was an astute, well-informed 
man, of good habits, with the tact of a practiced 
courtier, and many of the rare accomplishments of a 
statesman. Under his administration and that of 
his deputies on the Delaware, Capt. Cantwell, Capt. 
Collier, and Christopher Billop, the settlements on 
the South River prospered, and grew rapidly in pop- 
ulation, resources, and in sympathy and fellow-feel- 
ing with the other colonies. 



CHAPTER VII. 

WILLIAM PENN. 

The excellent Friend, Samuel M. Janney, of Lou- 
doun County, Va., in the preface to his " Life of Wil- 
liam Penn," published in November, 1851, concludes 
by saying, "While engaged in the preparation of this 
volume, I have derived both instruction and enjoy- 
ment from studying the character and writings of 
Penn ; and when, in its progress, I came to the period 
of his death, my mind was overspread with sadness, 
as though I had lost a personal friend." Every in- 
telligent and thoughtful person, we should think, must 
rise from the attentive study of Penn's life and works 
and the contemplation of his character with similar 
feelings and reflections. The founder of Pennsylva- 
nia and the man whose influence did so much to mould 
the rough, uncouth Quakerism of George Fox into 
comely shape, and give it some sort of standing in 
and with the outside world by teaching it moderation 
and decorum, has left such a large and indelible per- 
sonal impress upon his work that we can understand 
and fully appreciate that in no other way than by ex- 
amining it in the light of his genius. Happily the 
task is not difficult. William Penn was above all 
things else a man, with like passions unto ourselves. 
He was a great man in an age remarkable for men of 
towering genius and conspicuous individuality; he 
lived in strange times of turmoil, confusion, and un- 
certainty, in which the current of events flowed along 
with a double stream, resembling that of the Missis- 



sippi at St. Louis, upon the left bank a tawny, turbid 
volume of corruption, riot, filth, debauchery, and 
vacillating irresponsible tyranny such as was never 
recorded in the chronicles of England before nor 
since, and flowing side by side with it on the right a 
deep, clear, yet mysterious blue tide of religious con- 
templation and pietistic ecstasy and exercise, — a new- 
born, non-militant Puritanism, which sought to found 
a democratic church without head and without ritual, 
such as the State could not control because unable to 
reach it, and such as persecution would assail in vain 
because encountering no resistance. Penn's relations 
to these times and events and the men active in them 
were numerous, far-reaching, various, and intricate, 
but over and above these his character shines forth 
almost invariably bright and pure, simple and serene. 
He was in these things, but not of them, and whether 
he was walking the lobby among the courtiers or in- 
terceding for some victim of hardship or tyranny in 
the king's closet at Whitehall, or locked up in New- 
gate or the Tower, his thoughts rose above and reached 
beyond his immediate surroundings, taking him to 
his pretty and peaceful home in Hertfordshire or Sus- 
sex, or to some " brave" and " improving" and " prec- 
ious" meeting in company with Fox, Barclay, Keith, 
Turner, and others, or leading him into deep and 
fruitful meditations upon the " Holy Experiment," 
as he was wont to call his American colonies, the 
germs of which were already planted in his heart. 
There were some exceptions to this lofty elevation of 
life, thought, and purpose, but only so many as were 
needed to prove that Penn was human, fallible, and 
lived in an age steeped in corruption. 

It will serve the objects of this history to pause here 
to inquire how Penn came to be led to entertain seri- 
ously the project of founding upon the banks of the 
Delaware a self-governing commonwealth, the roots 
of which should draw sap from the fundamental prin- 
ciples of universal religion, while its branches should 
be free as air to spread abroad wheresoever they listed. 
The process was necessarily a gradual one, and the 
influences which finally settled his determination were 
numerous and diverse. 

At once a scholar and a courtier, a man of the 
world and a man of books, Peun was neither an as- 
cetic nor a fanatic. The least bit of formalism 
flavored his character, but it was altogether outward, 
and he wore it easily as he wore his cloak. The 
broad and deep channels through which his specula- 
tion and thought made their way were much less 
under the guidance of the severe and logical processes 
which directed the minds of men like Fox and Bar- 
clay, Baxter and Stillingfleet, than they were obe- 
dient to the quick suggestions of his warm and fruc- 
tifying imagination. He was an enthusiast, but his 
enthusiasm was colored by his large, genial heart and 
his benevolent disposition, as it was tempered and 
modulated also by his native shrewdness, his reading, 
and his carefully acquired knowledge of men, which 



78 



HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA. 



constant intercourse with the world had confirmed to 
him. It seems probable that the stories of his father, 
the admiral, about the conquest of Jamaica and of the 
tropical splendors of that beautiful island first turned 
the attention of Penn to our continent. He was twelve 
or thirteen years old when he would have heard these 
things, and while growing in beauty and manliness, he 
was already seeing the visions and dreaming the 
dreams which visit none but children of great imagi- 
nation and extreme sensitiveness. When Penn went 
to Oxford, at the age of sixteen, he seems to have 
studied the English literature of the two preceding 
generations more closely than his text-books. He 
knew the Puritan idea as expounded by Vane and 
Hollis, and the Utopian schemes for ideal common- 
wealths as set forth by Sir Thomas More, Bacon, 
Harington, and others. He felt then, with a sense of 
personal injustice, the pressure of an established 
hierarchy upon the individual, as illustrated in his 
own expulsion from Christ Church College for non- 
conformity, and it is certain that he studied theology, 
theoretical and dogmatic, very assiduously while at 
Saumur under the tutelage of that learned expounder 
of Genevan doctrine, Moses Amyrault. 1 It was while 
on the continent, contemporaneously with these stu- 
dies, that Penn made the acquaintance of Algernon 
Sidney, that honest old English republican, tired of 
exile, yet unwilling to purchase a return home at the 
cost of sacrificing his ideas, and eager to expound 
those ideas to any English hearer who might chance 
to come his way. 

When Penn had lived a few years longer in courts 
and among men he realized the fact that the Friends 
could not escape persecution nor enjoy without taint 
their peculiar religious seclusion, nor could his ideal 
commonwealth be planted in such a society as that 
of Europe. It must seek new and virgin soil, where 
it could form its own manners and ripen its own code. 
Then, in 1672, came home George Fox, fresh from his 
journey through the wilderness and his visits to the 
Quaker settlements in New Jersey and Maryland, in 
which latter province the ancient meetings of Anne 

l Penn's curious acquaintance with theology not only served him many 
a good turn in the polemical controversies, in which lie touk a not too 
pacific delight for a Quaker, but it often aided him to turn the tables 
upon his adverBarieB in business of a more practical character. Thus when 
the early Quakers in Maryland were disturbed in their minds about the 
question of oaths, which had already prevented John Edniondston, of 
Talbot County, from taking his seat in the Assembly, though often 
elected, Penn wrote to them (Anno 1673) a letter of advice as to how to 
deal with the officials of a Catholic colony. He referred them to Po- 
lybius, Grotius, BiBhop Gaudens, etc. ; alluded to the fact that Christ had 
forbidden " vain swearing," and added : " Thirdly. That it is not only 
our sense: Polycarpus, Ponticus, Blandina, BasilideB, primitive martyrs, 
were of this mind, and Justin Martyr, Cyprian, Origeu, Lactantius, 
Clemens Alexandrinus, Busilius, Magnus Chrysostom Theophylact, 
CEcumeniuB, Chromatius, Euthymiua (Fathers) so read the text, not to 
mention any of the Protestant martyrs. Therefore should they be ten- 
der." He thus in effect arrayed against the slaves of authority the whole 
panel of patriotic writers whom the Catholic Church revere as only a 
little below the apostles in inspiration, and it was this subtlety and 
skillful adjustment of means to end in argument which, more than any- 
thing else, led to the epithet of "Jesuit" being attached to Penn. 



Arundel and Talbot were already important gather- 
ings of a happy people entirely free from persecutions. 
We may imagine how eagerly and closely Penn read 
Fox's journals and the letters of Edmondston, Wen- 
lock Christison, and others about their settlements. 

In 1675, when his disgust with European society 
and his consciousness of the impossibility to effect 
radical reform there had been confirmed and deep- 
ened, Penn became permanently identified with 
American colonial affairs, and was put in the best 
possible position for acquiring a full and accurate 
knowledge of the resources and possibilities of the 
country between the Susquehanna and the Hudson. 
This, which Mr. Janney calls "an instance in which 
Divine Providence seemed to open for him a field of 
labors to which he was eminently adapted," arose out 
of the fact of his being chosen as arbitrator in the 
disputes growing out of the partition of the West 
Jersey lands. As has already been stated, on March 
12, 1664, King Charles II. granted to his brother 
James, Duke of York and Albany, a, patent for all 
the lands in New England from the St. Croix River 
to the Delaware. This patent, meant to lead directly 
up to the overthrow of the Dutch power in New 
Netherland, was probably also intended no less as a 
hostile demonstration against the New England Puri- 
tan colonies, which both the brothers hated cordially, 
and which latterly had grown so independent and 
had so nearly established their own autonomy as to 
provoke more than one charge that they sought 
presently to abandon all allegiance due from them to 
the mother-country. At any rate, the New England 
colonies at once attempted to organize themselves 
into a confederacy for purposes of mutual defense 
against the Indians and Canadian French, as was 
alleged, but for divers other and weighty reasons, as 
many colonists did not hesitate to proclaim. 2 The 
Duke of York secured New York, Pennsylvania, 
and Delaware to himself as his own private posses- 
sions. That part of New Netherland lying between 
the Hudson and the Delaware Rivers was forth- 
with (in 1664, before Nicolls sailed from Portsmouth 
to take New York) conveyed by the duke, by deeds 
of lease and release, to John Lord Berkeley and Sir 
George Carteret. The latter being governor of the 
Channel Islands at the time, the new colony was 
called New Jersey, or rather Nova Cxsarea, in the 
original grant. In 1675, Lord Berkeley sold for one 
thousand pounds his undivided half-share in New 
Jersey to John Fenwick, in trust for Edward Billinge 
and his assigns. Fenwick and Billinge were both 
Quakers, and Billinge was bankrupt. Not long after 
this conveyance Fenwick and Billinge fell out about 



2 This was a revival of the old New England confederacy of 1643, of 
late crippled and made ineffective by inter-colonial dissensions. It 
finally fell to pieces through the destruction of local self-government 
and the substitution of royal governors in the New England colonies 
between 1664 and 1684. See Richard Frothingham's " Rise of the Re- 
public," chap. ii. 



WILLIAM PENN. 



79 



the property, and, after the custom of the Friends, 
the dispute was submitted to arbitration. The dis- 
putants fixed upon William Penn as arbitrator. 
When he made his award, Fenwick was not satisfied 
and refused to abide by Penn's decision, which, in- 
deed, gave Fenwick only a tenth of Lord Berkeley's 
share in the joint tenancy, reserving the remaining 
nirie-tenths to Billinge, but giving Fenwick a money 
payment besides. Penn was offended at Fenwick's 
recalcitrancy, and wrote him some sharp letters. 
" Thy days spend on," he said, " and make the best 
of what thou hast. Thy grandchildren may be in 
the other world before the land thou hast allotted 
will be employed." Penn stuck to his decision, and, 
for that matter, Fenwick likewise maintained his 
grievance. He sailed for the Delaware at the head 
of a colony, landed at Salem, N. J., and commenced 
a settlement. Here he carried matters with such a 
high hand, patenting land, distributing office, etc., 
that he made great trouble for himself and others 
also. His authority was not recognized, and for sev- 
eral years the name of Maj. John Fenwick fills a 
large place in the court records of Upland and New 
York, where he was frequently imprisoned and sued 
for damages by many injured persons. 

Billinge's business embarrassments increasing, he 
made over his interest in the territory to his creditors, 
appointing Penn, with Gawen Lawrie, of London, and 
Nicholas Lucas, of Hertford, two of the creditors, as 
trustees in the matter. The plan was not to sell, but 
improve the property for the benefit of the creditors. 
To this end a partition of the province was made, a line 
being drawn through Little Egg Harborto a point near 
where Port Jervis now is. The part of the province 
on the right of this line, called East New Jersey, the 
most settled portion of the territory, was assigned to 
Carteret. That on the left, West New Jersey, was 
deeded to Billinge's trustees. A form of government 
was at once established for West Jersey, in which 
Penn's hand is distinctly seen. The basis was 
liberty of person and conscience, "the power in the 
people," local self-government, and amelioration of 
the criminal code. The territory was next divided 
into one hundred parts, ten being assigned to Fen- 
wick and ninety to Billinge's trustees, and the land 
was opened for sale and occupancy, being extensively 
advertised, and particularly recommended to Friends. 
In 1677 and 1678 five vessels sailed for West New 
Jersey, with eight hundred emigrants, nearly all 
Quakers. Two companies of these, one from York- 
shire, the other from London, bought large tracts of 
land, and sent out commissioners to quiet Indian 
titles and lay off the properties. At Chygoes Island 
they located a town, first called Beverly, then Brid- 
lington, then Burlington. 1 There was a regular treaty 

1 The value of Indian lands at that time to the savages may be gath- 
ered from the price paid in 1677 for twenty miles square on the Dela- 
ware between Timber and Oldman's Creeks, to wit: 30 match-coats (made 
of hairy wool with the rough Bide out), 20 guns, 30 kettles, 1 great kettle, 



with the Indians, and the Friends not only secured 
peace for themselves, but paved the way for the 
pacific relations so firmly sealed by Penn's subsequent 
negotiations with the savages. The Burlington colony 
prospered, and was reinforced by new colonists con- 
tinually arriving in considerable numbers. In 1680, 
Penn, as counsel for the trustees of West New Jersey, 
succeeded, by means of a vigorous and able remon- 
strance, in getting the Duke of York, then proprietary 
of New York, to remove an onerous tax on imports 
and exports imposed by the Governor of New York 
and collected at the Horekill. The next year Penn 
became part proprietor of East New Jersey, which 
was sold under the will of Sir George Carteret, then 
deceased, to pay his debts. A board of twenty-four 
proprietaries was organized, Penn being one, and to 
them the Duke of York made a fresh grant of East 
New Jersey, dated March 14, 1682, Robert Barclay 
becoming Governor, while Penn's friend Billinge was 
made Governor of West New Jersey. Both these 
governments were surrendered to the crown in Queen 
Anne's reign, April 15, 1702. 

While Penn was thus acquiring knowledge of and 
strong property interests in America, two other cir- 
cumstances occurred to intensify his impatience with 
the state of affairs in England. One was the insen- 
sate so-called "Popish plot" of Titus Oates, the other 
the defeat of his friend, Algernon Sidney, for Parlia- 
ment. From the date of these events Penn began to 
look westward, and prepared himself for the accom- 
plishment of his " Holy Experiment." And now, 
before detailing the history of this great experiment, 
and describing one of its results in this fair city of 



30 pair of hose, 20 fathoms of duffels (Duffield blanket cloth, of which 
match-coats were made), 30 petticoats, 30 narrow hoes, 30 bars of lead, 
15 small barrels of powder, 70 knives, 30 Indian axes, 70 combs, 60 pair 
of tobacco tongs, GO pair of Bcissors, 60 tinshaw looking-glasses, 120 
awl-blades, 120 fish-hooks, 2 grasps of red paint, 120 needles, 60 tobacco- 
boxes, 120 pipeB, 200 bells, 100 jews-harps, and 6 anchors of rum." The 
value of these articles probably did not exceed three hundred pounds 
sterling. But, on the other hand, the Indian titles were really worth 
nothing, except so far as they served as a security againBt Indian hos- 
tility. It has been said that there is not an acre of land in the eastern 
part of Pennsylvania the deeds of which cannot be traced up to an 
Indian title, but that in effect would be no title at all. Mr. Lawrence 
Lewis, in his learned and luminous ' Essay ou Original Land Titles in 
Philadelphia," denies this absolutely, and says that it is " impossible to 
trace with any accuracy" the titles to land in Philadelphia derived from 
the Indians. Nor is it necessary to trace a title which is of no value. 
The Indians could not sell laud to individuals and give valid title for it 
in any of the colonies ; they could sell, if they chose, but only to the 
government. Upon this subject the lawyers are explicit. All good 
titles in the thirteen original colonies are derived from land-grants 
made or accepted not by the Indians, but by the British crown. Thus 
Chalmers (Political Annals, 677) says, "The law of nations sternly 
disregarded the possession of the aborigines, because they had not been 
admitted into the society of nations." At the Declaration of Independ- 
ence (see Dallas' Reports, ii. 470) evory acre of land in this country was 
held, mediately or immediately, by grants from the crown. All our 
institutions (Wheaton, viii. 588) recognize the absolute tide of the 
crown, subject only to the Indian right of occupancy, and recognize 
the absolute title of the crown to extinguish that right. An Indian 
conveyance alone could give no title to au individual. (The references 
here given are quoted from the accurate Frothingham's " Rise of the 
Republic") 



80 



HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA. 



which we write, it is proper to say a few words con- 
cerning the life of the great founder. 

William Penn was born in London, in St. Catha- 
rine's Parish, hard by the Tower, Oct. 14, 1644. His 
father was Vice-Admiral Sir William Penn, his 
mother Margaret Jasper, daughter of a well-to-do 
Rotterdam merchant. They were united Jan. 6, 1643, 
when the elder Penn, though only twenty years old, 
had already received his commission as post-captain 
in the royal navy, and William was their first child. 
Admiral Penn was a kind-hearted, genial, but shrewd 




AMIS OF PENN. 

and observant man of the world. He was a skillful 
sailor and navigator, very brave and prompt, a man 
of action, a man also who was determined to get on 
in the world which he saw about him. He had set 
his hopes on a fortune and the peerage. The fortune 
he got; the peerage he would have secured but for 
his son William's adhesion to the doctrine of the 
Friends. At court he steered himself as adroitly as 
he had steered his fleet amid the reefs and cays of 
the Antilles on his way to Jamaica and Hispaniola. 
He owed his early promotion and appointment to 
Cromwell, but when he thought the times were ripe 
he deliberately betrayed the Protector and offered 
his fleet to Charles II. He was a great favorite with 
Charles and the Duke of York, and the latter became 
his son's chief protector for the father's sake. He 
was impetuous, irascible, yet strongly attached to his 
family and their interests as he interpreted them. It 
is almost pathetic to notice the many efforts he made 
to reclaim his son from what he regarded as his way- 
ward departure from common sense in joining the 
Society of Friends. He at first beat the boy and 
turned him out-doors, then sent him abroad in the 
best company, and with a pocket full of money, to 
make the grand tour of Europe, and learn gayety and 
frivolity enough to enable him to shine at court. 
He dispatched him to become a member of the bril- 
liant family of the Duke of Ormond, viceroy of Ire- 



land. But the young man proved, as his father 
thought, incorrigible, and he was again beaten, 
kicked out of the, house, and left to shift for himself. 
Finally, when, broken in health and spirits, and dis- 
appointed in his fondest anticipations, the admiral 
found himself on his death-bed, he had learned to 
admire his son's skill and quickness in polemical 
fence, and the calm, unbending, uncomplaining for- 
titude with which he bore persecution, insult, and 
imprisonment. " Son William," he whispered, just 
before he died, "if you and your friends keep to your 
plain way of preaching and to your plain way of 
living, you will make an end of the priests to the 
end of the world." 

Lady Penn seems to have been as quiet and domes- 
tic as Sir William was gay and worldly. Pepys said, 
twenty years after her marriage, that she had been 
very handsome and "is now very discreet." It is not 
improbable that John Jasper, the merchant of Rot- 
terdam, may have been of Puritan stock or affinities; 
it is nearly certain that from his mother Penn derived 
the strength of his early religious impressions, his 
tendency to sobriety of thought and conversation, and 
his quiet but deep enthusiasm, just as he inherited 
from his father the quick mother-wit, the shrewdness 
in bargaining, and the political and courtier-like skill 
in dealing with men of all ranks and judging all sorts 
of characters which so often stood him in good stead 
in the experiences of his checkered life. Those early 
religious impressions, whatever their source, grew with 
the boy's growth and strengthened with his strength. 
While he was yet at Chigwell grammar school he had 
visions of the "Inner Light," though he as yet had 
never heard Fox's name mentioned. He was not a 
puny child, though he must have been a studious one. 
He delighted and excelled in field sports, boating, 
running, hunting, and athletic exercises. He was 
sent from the grammar school to Oxford, and entered 
as a fellow-commoner in Christ Church College at the 
early age of fifteen. The dean of Christ Church was 
the famous polemical writer, Dr. John Owen; South 
was orator of the university, Locke was a fellow of 
Christ Church, and the profligate but witty Wilmot 
was a fellow-commoner. Penn studied assiduously, 
he joined the " serious set," he went to hear Thomas 
Loe preach the new gospel of the Society of Friends, 
he resented the discipline which the college attempted 
to put upon him and his intimates in consequence, 
and he was expelled the university for rejecting the 
surplice and rioting in the quadraugle. His father 
beat him, relented, and sent him to France, where he 
came home with the manners and dress of a courtier, 
but saturated with Genevan theology. Pepys says he 
looked quite "modish," and Pepys was a judge of 
dress. He had shown in Paris that he could use his 
rapier gallantly, and his father took him to sea with 
him, to prove to the court, when he returned as bearer 
of dispatches, that he was capable of beginning the 
career of office. The plague of London set him again, 



WILLIAM PENN. 



81 



upon a train of serious thinking, and his father to 
counteract this sent him to the Duke of Ormond, at 
the same time giving him charge of his Irish estates. 
Penn danced in Dublin and fought at Oarrickfergus 
equally well, and he even applied for a troop of horse. 
He was a very handsome young fellow, and armor and 
lace became him mightily, as his portrait of this date 
shows. But at Cork he met Thomas Loe again, and 
heard a sermon upon the text " There is a faith which 
overcomes the world, and there is a faith which is 
overcome by the world." Penn came out of this 
meeting a confirmed Quaker. His father recalled 
him, but could not break his convictions, and then 
again he was driven from home, but his mother still 
found means to supply his needs. He now joined the 
Quakers regularly, and became the most prominent of 
the followers of that singularly eccentric but singu- 
larly gifted leader of men, George Fox. Penn's affec- 
tion for Fox was deep and strong. He repeatedly got 
"the man in the leather breeches'' released from jail, 
and he gave him a thousand acres of land out of the 
first surveys made in Pennsylvania. Fox had great 
influence over him, and it is likely that Penn recipro- 
cally wrought upon Fox's character for his benefit. 

We must not lightly regard the sacrifices of this 
handsome young enthusiast. He was a favorite ; 
he had the manners to push him at court ; he had 
certain and powerful influences upon his side; yet, 
instead of taking the step that would make him Lord 
Weymouth, he became a preacher for a despised sect, 
universally treated as zealots or lunatics, whose stead- 
fast disregard of a statute made them continually in- 
mates of the loathsome gaols of England. Penn did 
this for conscience' sake ; and he was neither a zealot 
nor a lunatic, but an English gentleman, fond of dress, 
comfort,, ease, and something like luxury, an accom- 
plished courtier, a thorough business man, and one 
of the shrewdest students and judges of character. 
Penn preached in public as Fox was doing, and so 
well that he soon found himself a prisoner in the 
Tower of London, where, when brought up for trial, he 
defended himself so ably as to prove that he could 
have become a great lawyer had he so chosen. He 
profited by his imprisonments to issue a series of 
works, chiefly controversial, which revealed a writer 
of great force and perspicuity and acuteness. He 
could not perhaps cope with Baxter, but he vanquished 
nearly every opponent who came against him. Penn 
married in 1672, his wife being Gulielma Springett, 
daughter of Sir William Springett, a lady of lovely 
person and sweet temper. It was a love-match ; " re- 
member," he says in his beautiful letter to wife and 
children on his departure for America, "remember 
thou wast the love of my youth and much the joy of 
my life ; the most beloved, as well as the most worthy 
of all my earthly comforts ; and the reason of that 
love was more thy inward than thy outward excel- 
lences, which yet were many.'' But Penn did not 
give many weeks to his honeymoon. He was soon 
6 



at his work again, wrestling for the truth, and, it must 
be said, wrestling still more lustily, as one who wres- 
tles for victory, with the oppressors of the faithful. 
In this cause he went to court again, resumed his re- 
lations with the Duke of York, and secured that 
prince's influence in behalf of his persecuted sect. 
This semi-alliance of Penn with the duke led up di- 
rectly to the settlement of Pennsylvania. When, after 
Penn's return from his first visit to America, he re- 
sumed his place at court upon the accession of James 
•II., he became one of the most considerable men in 
the kingdom. He had the monarch's private ear, and 
his influence was all the time exerted on the side of 
justice and humanity, while he expended the best 
efforts of his natural courtier's tact and shrewd 
mother-wit in the vain endeavor to save a predes- 
tined despot and fanatic from the consequences of 
his fatal errors and blind follies. 

After James' abdication came persecution, debts, 
semi-exile, affliction of every sort to the Quaker 
courtier. His wife died, his son went to the tad, his 
steward robbed and betrayed him, his province and 
people were ungrateful, he was accused of treason, 
hunted by the royal pursuivants, and reduced to pov- 
erty. , There came an Indian summer of prosperity 
after this, when, acquitted of debt, and accusations 
dismissed, married to another wife, and glad to see 
how his work thrived, he returned to his province 
and enjoyed a brief reign of luxurious indolence and 
importance at his. manor and mansion of Pennsbury. 
Then his government was again threatened by the 
royal power, and he reluctantly went back to Eng- 
land, to find his affairs all disordered. " I never was 
so low and so reduced," he writes to James Logan. 
"O Pennsylvania," he says later on, in the bitterness 
of his spirit, " what hast thou not cost me? Above 
£30,000 more than I ever got by it, two hazardous 
and most fatiguing voyages, my straits and slavery 
here, and my son's soul almost!" He was forced 
into prison for debt, and when finally released, re- 
sumed his labors as a minister at the age of sixty-five. 
Soon after this he was paralyzed, his vigorous intel- 
lect dwindled away to second-childishness, but his 
sweetness of temper and disposition were still retained 
to the last, and in a way which evidently made a strong 
impression on all who saw him. " No insanity, no 
lunacy," says his old friend, Thomas Story, after a 
visit to him, " at all appeared in his actions, and his 
mind was in an innocent state, as appeared by his 
loving deportment to all that came near him; and 
that he had still a good sense of truth is plain by 
some very clear sentences he spoke in the life and 
power of truth in an evening meeting we had to- 
gether there, wherein we were greatly comforted, so 
that I was ready to think this was a sort of seques- 
tration of him from all the concerns of this life, 
which so much oppressed him, not in judgment but 
in mercy, that he might have rest and not be op- 
pressed thereby to the end." That end was now not 



82 



HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA. 



far off, and William Peun " forsook the decayed 
tabernacle" of his body on the 30th day of the Fifth 
Month (July, 1718, O. S.), in the seventy-fourth year 
of his age. The funeral took place August 5th, in 
the burying-ground at Jordan's Quaker meeting- 
house, in Buckinghamshire, where his first wife and 
several of his family were already interred. His 








WILLIAM PENN'S BUKIAL-PLAOK. 



own Monthly Meeting at Heading has left the best 
summary of his character in the touching little 
memorial entitled " A Testimony concerning William 
Penn," the last paragraph of which is as follows : 
"In fine he was learned without vanity, apt without 
forwardness, facetious in conversation, yet weighty 
and serious ; of an extraordinary greatness of mind, 
yet void of the strain of ambition ; as free from rigid 
gravity as he was clear of unseemly levity ; a man, a 
scholar, a friend ; a minister surpassing in specula- 
tive endowments, whose memorial will be valued by 
the wise and blessed with the just." "This," says 
Bancroft, " is the praise of William Penn," that in 
an age of debauchery and ennui, skepticism and 
pessimism, when all around him, even the wisest, shook 
their heads, " Penn did not despair of humanity, and, 
though all history and experience denied the sov- 
ereignty of the people, cared to cherish the noble 
idea of man's capacity for self-government." 

It certainly was a " noble idea" which lay at the 
bottom of Penn's " Holy Experiment," and its history 
should be unfolded with scrupulous exactness as well 
as with reverent hands. 

We have seen how, after the Restoration, the atten- 
tion of the court as well as the people of England was 
directed in a much larger measure than formerly to 
the American colonies. Many who were weary of 



perils of Indian warfare, the depressing diseases of a 
new climate and unbroken soil were as nothing to 
those in comparison with the blessings of political 
and religious liberty secured by emigration. As far 
as the court was concerned, Charles wanted provinces 
to give away to his favorites, while his cabinets, both 
under Clarendon, the Cabal, and Danby, had strong 
political reasons for putting the colonies 
more immediately under control of the 
crown in order to check their manifest 
yearning for self-government and com- 
parative independence. Thus the repre- 
sentatives of prerogative were compelled 
likewise to give an enlarged attention to 
colonial affairs. The Council for Foreign 
Plantations was given new powers and 
a greater and more exalted membership 
in 1671, and in 1674 this separate commis- 
sion was dissolved, and the conduct of 
colonial affairs intrusted to a committee 
of the Privy Council itself, which was 
directed to sit once a week and report its 
proceedings to the Council. This com- 
mittee comprised some of the ablest of the 
king's councilors, and among the mem- 
bers were the Duke of York and the 
Marquis of Halifax. William Penn's re- 
lations with the duke gave him great fa- 
cilities in dealing with this committee. 
Admiral Penn at his death had left his son a prop- 
erty of £1500 a year in English and Irish estates. 
There was in addition a claim against King Charles' 
government for money lent, which with interest 
amounted to £15,000. The king had no money and 
no credit. What he got from Louis XIV. through 
the compliant Barillon hardly sufficed for his own 
menus plaisirs. 1 Penn being now resolved to establish 
a colony in America alongside his New Jersey planta- 
tions, and to remove there himself with his family so 
as to be at the head of a new Quaker community and 
commonwealth, petitioned the king to granthim, in lieu 
of the claim of £15,000, a tract of country in America 
north of Maryland, with the Delaware on its east, its 
western limits the same as those of Maryland, and 
its northern as far as plantable country extended. Be- 
fore the Privy Council Committee Penn explained 
that he wanted five degrees of latitude measured from 
Lord Baltimore's line, and that line, at his sugges- 
tion, was drawn from the circumference of a circle, 
the radius of which was twelve miles from New Cas- 
tle as its centre. The petition of Penn's was received 
June 14, 1680. The object sought by the petitioner, 
it was stated, was not only to provide a peaceful 



1 Not to be wondered at when we find in Charles' book of Becret ser- 
vice money such entries as the following : " March 28th. Paid to Duchess 

strife, discontented with the present aspect of affairs j of Portsmouth [king's mistress] £13,341 10.. iy 2 d. in various sums. 

, . /..irf.j. i j. t c ^ ; June 14th. Paid to Richard Yates, son of Francis Yates, who conducted 

or apprehensive of the future, sought relief and peace Prince charle8 from fhe flc](1 of Worcester (o whyt(j Lat]]>s after (||e 

in emigration. The hardships of the wilderness, the j battle, and suffered death for It under Cromwell, £I01U«." 



WILLIAM PENN. 



83 



home for the persecuted members of the Society of 
Friends, but to afford an asylum for the good and 
oppressed of every nation on the basis of a practical 
application of the pure and peaceable principles of 
Christianity. The petition encountered much and 
various opposition. Sir John Werden, agent of the 
Duke of York, opposed it because the territory sought 
was an appendage to the government of New York, 
and as such belonged to the duke. Mr. Burke, the 
active and untiring agent of Lord Baltimore, opposed 
it because the grant asked by Penn would infringe 
upon the territory covered by Baltimore's charter. 
At any rate, said, Mr. Burke, in a letter to the Privy 
Council Committee, if the grant be made to Perm, 
let the deed expressly state lands to the north of 
Susquehanna Fort, "which is the boundary of Mary- 
land to the northward." There was also strong op- 
position in the Privy Council to the idea of a man 
such as Penn being permitted to establish plantations 
after his own peculiar model. His theories of gov- 
ernment were held to be Utopian and dangerous alike 
to Church and State. He was looked upon as » Re- 
publican like Sidney. However, he had strong friends 
in the Earl of Sunderland, Lord Hyde, Chief Justice 
North, and the Earl of Halifax. He had an inter- 
view with the Duke of York, and contrived to win 
him over to look upon his project with favor, and Sir 
J. Werden wrote to the secretary, saying, " His royal 
Highness commands me to let you know, in order 
to your informing their lordships of it, that he is 
very willing Mr. Penn's request may meet with suc J 
cess." The attorney-general, Sir William Jones, 
examined the petition in view of proposed bound- 
aries, and reported that with some alterations it did 
not appear to touch upon any territory of previous 
grants, " except the imaginary lines of New England 
patents, which are bounded westwardly by the main 
ocean, should give them a real though impracticable 
right to all those vast territories." The draught of the 
patent, when finally it had reached that stage of de- 
velopment, was submitted to the Lords of Trade to 
see if English commercial interests were subserved, 
and to the Bishop of London to look after the rights of 
the church. The king signed the patent on March 
4, 1681. A certified copy of the venerable document 
may now be seen framed and hung up in the office 
of the Secretary of State at Harrisburg. The name 
to be given to the new territory was left blank for the 
king to filhup, and Charles called it Pennsylvania. 
Penn, who seems to have been needlessly squeamish 
on the subject, wrote to his friends to say that the 
name was in honor of his father, and that he wanted 
the territory called New Wales, and offered the Under 
Secretary twenty guineas to change the name, " for I 
feared lest it should be looked on as a vanity in me." 
However, he consoled himself with the reflection 
that "it is a just and clear thing, and my God, that 
has given it me through many difficulties, will, I be- 
lieve, bless and make it the seed of a nation. I 



shall have a tender care to the government that it 
be well laid at first." 

The charter, which is given complete in Haz- 
ard's Annals, consists of twenty-three articles, with 
a preamble reciting the king's desire to extend his 
dominions and trade, convert the savages, etc., and 
his sense of obligation to Sir William Penn : 

I. The grant comprises all that part of America, islands included, 
which is bounded on the east by the Delaware River from a point on a 
circle twelve miles northward of New Castle town to the 43° north lat- 
itude if the Delaware extends so far; if not, as far as it does extend, and 
thence to the 43° by a meridian line. From this point westward five de- 
grees of longitude on the 43° parallel ; the western boundary to the 40tli 
parallel, and thence by a straight line to the place of beginning. 

II. Grants Penn rights to and use of rivers, harbors, fisheries, etc. 

III. Creates and constitutes him Lord Proprietary of the Provinc, 
saving only his allegiance to the King, Penn to hold directly of the 
kings of England, " as of our castle of Windsor i n the county of Berks, 
in free and common socage, by fealty only, for all services, and not 
in capile, or by Knight's service, yielding and paying therefore to ns, 
our heirs and successors, two beaver-skins, to be delivered at our castle 
of Windsor on the 1st day of January every year," also one-fifth of 
precious metals taken out. On these terms Pennsylvania was erected 
into " a province and seigniory." 

IV. Grants Penn and his successors, his deputies and lieutenants 
"free, full, and absolute power" to make laws for raising money for the 
public uses of the Province and for other public purposes at their discre- 
tion, by and with the advice and consent of the people or their represen- 
tatives in assembly. 

V. Grants power to appoint officers, judges, magistrates, etc., to pardon 
offenders, before judgment or after, except in cases of treason, and to 
have charge of the entire establishment of justice, with the single pro- 
viso that the laws adopted shall be consonant to reason and not contrary 
nor repugnant to the laws and statutes of England, and that all persons 
should have the right of appeal to the King. 

VI. Prescribes that the laws of England are to be in force in the 
Province until others have been substituted for them. 

YII. Laws adopted for the government of the Province to be sent to 
England for royal approval within five years after their adoption, under 
penalty of becoming void. 

VIII. Licenses emigration to the new colony. 

IX. Licenses trade between the colony and England, subject to the 
restrictions of the Navigation Acts. 

X. Grants permission to Penn to divide the colony into the various 
minor political divisions, to constitute fairs, grant immunities and ex- 
emptions, etc. 

XI. Similar to IX., but applies to exports from colony. 

XII. Grants leave to create seaportB and harbors, etc., in aid of trade 
and commerce, subject to English customs regulations. 

XIII. Penn and the Province to have liberty to levy cuBtoms duties. 

XIV. The Proprietary to have a resident agent in London, to answer 
in case of charges, etc., and continued misfeasance to void the charter 
and restore the government of the Province to the King. 

XV. Proprietary forbidden intercourse or correspondence with the 
enemies of England. 

XVI. Grants leave to Proprietary to pursue and make war on the 
savages or robbers, pirates, etc., and to levy forces for that end, and to 
kill and slay according to the laws of war. 

XVII. Grants full power to Penn to sell or otherwise convey lands in 
the Province. 

XVIII. Gives title to persons holding under Penn. 

XIX. Penn may erect manors, and each manor to have privilege of 
court-baron and frank-pledge, holders under manor-title to be protected 
in their tenure. 

XX. The King not to lay taxes in the Province "unless the same be 
with the consent of the Proprietary, or chief Governor, or Assembly, or 
by act of Parliament of England." 

XXI. The charter to be valid in English courts against all assumptions 
or presumptions of ministers or royal officers. 

XXII. Bishop of London may send out clergymen if asked to do so 
by twenty inhabitants of the Province. 

XXIII. In cases of doubt the charter is to be i uterpreted and con- 
strued liberally in Penn's favor, provided such construction do not inter 
fere with or lessen the royal prerogative. 



84 



HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA. 



On the 2d of April, after the signing of the charter, 
King Charles made a public proclamation of the fact 
of the patent, addressed chiefly to the inhabitants of 
the territory, enjoining upon them to yield ready 
obedience to Penn and his deputies and lieutenants. 
At the same time Penn also addressed a letter to the 
inhabitants of the province, declaring that he wished 
them all happiness here and hereafter, that the Prov- 
idence of God had cast them within his lot and care, 
and, though it was a new business to him, he under- 
stood his duty and meant to do it uprightly. He told 
the people that they were not now at the mercy of a 
Governor who came to make his fortune out of them, 
but " you shall be governed by laws of your own 
making, and live a free and, if you will, a sober and 
industrious people. I shall not usurp the right of 
any or oppress his person. God has furnished me 
with a better resolution and has given me his grace 
to keep it." He hoped to see them in a few months, 
and any reasonable provision they wanted made for 
their security and happiness would receive his appro- 
bation. Until he came he hoped they would obey 
and pay their customary dues to his deputy. 

That deputy was Penn's cousin, William Markham, 
a captain in the British army, who was on April 20, 
1681, commissioned to go out to Pennsylvania, and 
act in that capacity until Penn's arrival. He was 
given power to call a Council of nine, of which he was 
to be president; to secure a recognition of Penn's 
authority on the part of the people; to settle bounds 
between Penn and his neighbors ; to survey, lay out, 
rent, or lease lands according to instructions ; to erect 
courts, make sheriffs, justices of the peace, and other 
inferior requisite officers, so as to keep the peace and 
enforce the laws ; to suppress disturbance or riot by 
the posse comitatus, and to make or ordain any ordi- 
nances or do whatever he lawfully might for the peace 
and security of the province. Markham was partic- 
ularly instructed to settle, if he could, boundaries with 
Lord Baltimore, and Penn gave him a letter to that 
neighbor of his. The deputy soon after sailed foi 
Pennsylvania, on what day is not definitely known, 
but he was in New York on June 21st, when he ob- 
tained from the Governor, Anthony Brockholls, a 
proclamation enjoining upon the inhabitants of Penn- 
sylvania that they should obey the king's charter and 
yield a ready obedience to the new proprietary and 
his deputy. When Markham met Lord Baltimore the 
interview was unsatisfactory. The boundary question 
at once came up, and was as quickly let drop when 
Markham found that the lines could not be run ac- 
cording to the two charters respectively without 
giving to Baltimore some lands which Penn was re- 
solved to keep as his own. 

It is not supposed that Markham took out any em- 
igrants with him. His business was to get possession 
of the province as speedily as possible, so as to insure 
the allegiance of the people, secure the revenue, and 
prepare the way for Penn. It is probable, therefore, 



that he sailed in the first ship offering for New York 
or Boston, without waiting for company. Meanwhile, 
even before Markham's departure, Penn began to 
advertise his new province and popularize what 
information he had concerning it. This was the 
business part of the " Holy Experiment," and Penn 
was very competent to discharge it. He published a 
pamphlet (through Benjamin Clark, bookseller, in 
George Yard, Lombard Street) entitled "Some ac- 
count of the Province of Pennsylvania in America, 
lately granted under the Great Seal of England to 
William Penn, etc. Together with privileges and 
powers necessary to the well-governing thereof. 
Made publick for the information of such as are 
or may be disposed to transport themselves or ser- 
vants into those parts." This prospectus shows the 
extent of the knowledge Penn had already gleaned 
concerning his province, and how closely he had 
studied the methods by which he proposed to secure 
its prompt and effective planting and settlement. It is 
not necessary to incorporate the whole of such a pam- 
phlet in this narrative, but some of its salient points 
must be noted. It was written, we must remember, 
in April, 1681, a month after the signing of the pat- 
ent. Penn begins with an excursus upon the benefit 
of plantations or colonies in general, " to obviate a 
common objection." "Colonies," he says, "are the 
seeds of nations, begun and nourished by the care of 
wise and populous countries, as conceiving them best 
for the increase of human stock and beneficial for com- 
merce." Antiquity is then searched through for ex- 
amples needless to repeat, but all brought in to prove 
that colonies do not weaken or impoverish the mother- 
country. Indeed, this part of his argument reads as if 
it were Penn's brief while his petition was before the 
Privy Council, and as if he drew it up in reply to ob- 
jections there urged against concedinghim the patent. 
He shows how colonies and foreign plantations have 
contributed to the benefit of England's commerce 
and industry, and might be expected to continue to 
do so. He denies that emigration has depopulated 
the country, but says that the increase of luxury has 
drawn an undue proportion of the rural communities 
into cities and towns, and that the increased cost of 
living thus brought about tends to prevent marriage 
and so promotes the decay of population. For this 
and the many attendant evils emigration, he sug- 
gests, is the only effective remedy. He then proceeds 
to speak of his province, the inducements it offers to 
colonists, and the terms on which he is prepared to 
receive them. 

" The place," he says, " lies six hundred miles nearer 
the sun than England," so far as difference of latitude 
goes, adding, " I shall say little in its praise to excite 
desires in any, whatever I could truly write as to the 
soil, air, and water; this shall satisfy me, that by the 
blessing of God and the honesty and industry of man 
it may be a good and fruitful land." He then enu- 
merates the facilities for navigation by way of the 



WILLIAM PENN. 



85 



Delaware Bay and River, and by way of Chesapeake 
Bay also; the variety and abundance of timber; the 
quantity of game, wild fowl, and fish ; the variety of 
products and commodities, native or introduced, in- 
cluding "silk, flax, hemp, wine, sider, wood, madder, 
liquorish, tobacco, pot-ashes, and iron, . . . hides, tal- 
low, pipe-staves, beef, pork, sheep, wool, corn or 
wheat, barley, rye, and also furs, as your peltree, 
mincks, racoons, martins, and such like store of furs 
which is to be found among the Indians that are 
profitable commodities in England." Next, after ex- 
plaining the channels of trade, — country produce to 
Virginia, tobacco to England, English commodities 
to the colonies, — he gives assurance that under his 
liberal charter, paying due allegiance to the mother- 
country, the people will be able to enjoy the very 
largest proportion of liberty and make their own laws 
to suit themselves, and that he intends to prepare a 
satisfactory constitution. 

Penn states explicitly in this pamphlet the con- 
ditions of immigration into his province. He looks 
to see three sorts of people come, — those who will 
buy, those who will rent, and servants. " To the first, 
the shares I sell shall be certain as to number of acres ; 
that is to say, every one shall contain five thousand 
acres, free from any incumbrance, the price a hundred 
pounds, and for the quit-rent but one English shilling, 
or the value of it, yearly, for a hundred acres ; and 
the said quit-rent not to begin to be paid till 1684. 
To the second sort, that take up land upon rent, they 
shall have liberty so to do, paying yearly one penny 
per acre, not exceeding two hundred acres. To the 
third sort, to wit, servants that are carried over, 1 fifty 
acres shall be allowed to the master for every head, 
and fifty acres to every servant when their time is 
expired. And because some engage with me that may 
not be disposed to go, it were very advisable for every 
three adventurers to send over an overseer with their 
servants, which would well pay the cost." 2 

Penn next speaks of his plan for allotments or divi- 
dends, but as his scheme was not then, as he confesses, 
fully developed, and as he later furnished all the de- 
tails of this scheme as he finally matured it, we will 
pass that by for the present. It is enough to say that 
the plan is very closely followed to-day in Eastern 
Europe to promote the sale of government bonds. 

1 The practice of carrying servants "over" was not long continued. 

In a few years many came to try their fortunes and entered into service. 

2 On this basis, if we suppose the servant allotments to pay the same 

quit-rent as other tenants, Peon's colonists would be assessed about thus : 

Manors. — 5000 acres @ £100, int. 5 per cent £5 

50 servants to a manor, giving it 2500 acres more, 

total quit-rent @ Is. per 100 A 3 10 

(Equal to 27£ pence per 100 A. per annum) £8 10s. 

Tenants.— 200 A. @ Id. per A 

5000 A., 25 tenants, 25 servants, 1250 A., 6250 A. ® Id. 26 

Srrmnts.— 76 servants @ 50 A., equal to 3750 A. @ Id 15 12% 

Thus Penn, in placing 17,500 acres, proposed to get £100 cash and 
yearly rents amounting to £45 2s., or 5s. 2d. nearly per 100 acres, the 
greater part of the burden falling upon the smaller tenants of course. 
The purchaser of 5000 acres had, moreover, a further advantage in sharing 
in the allotments, or " dividends," as Penn calls them. 



The persons, Penn says, that " Providence seems to 
have most fitted for plantations" are " 1st, industri- 
ous husbandmen and day laborers that are hardly 
able (with extreme labor) to maintain their families 
and portion their children; 2d, laborious handicrafts, 
especially carpenters, masons, smiths, weavers, taylors, 
tanners, shoemakers, shipwrights, etc., where they may 
be spared or low in the world, and as they shall want 
no encouragement, so their labor is worth more there 
than here, and there provisions cheaper." 3d, Penn 
invites ingenious spirits who are low in the world, 
younger brothers with small inheritances and (often) 
large families; "lastly," he says, "there are another 
sort of persons, not only fit for but necessary in planta- 
tions, and that is men of universal spirits, that have an 
eye to the good of posterity, and that both understand 
and delight to promote good discipline and just govern- 
ment among a plain and well-intending people; such 
persons may find room in colonies for their good coun- 
sel and contrivance, who are shut out from being of 
much use or service to great nations under settled 
customs ; these men deserve much esteem and would 
be hearken'd to." 

Very considerately Penn next tells all he knows 
about the cost and equipments for the journey and 
subsistence during the first few months, "that such as 
incline to go may not be to seek here, or brought un- 
der any disappointments there." He mentions among 
goods fit to take for use or for sale at a profit "all 
sorts of apparel and utensils for husbandry and build- 
ing and household stuff." People must not delude 
themselves, he says, with the idea of instant profits. 
They will have a winter to encounter before the sum- 
mer comes, "and they must be willing to be two or 
three years without some of the conveniences they 
enjoy at home, and yet I must needs say that America 
is another thing than it was at the first plantation of 
Virginia and New England, for there is better accom- 
modation and English provisions are to be had at 
easier rates." The passage across the ocean will be 
at the outside six pounds per head for masters and 
mistresses, and five pounds for servants, children un- 
der seven years old fifty shillings, "except they suck, 
then nothing." Arriving out in September or Octo- 
ber, "two men may clear as much ground by spring 
(when they set the corn of that country) as will brino- 
in that time, twelve months, forty barrels, which makes 
twenty-five quarters of corn. So that the first year they 
must buy corn, which is usually very plentiful. They 
must, so soon as they come, buy cows, more or less, as 
they want or are able, which are to be had at easy 
rates. For swine, they are plentiful and cheap, these 
will quickly increase to a stock. So that after the 
first year, what with the poorer sort sometimes labor- 
ing to others, and the more able fishing, fowling, and 
sometimes buying, they may do very well till their 
own stocks are sufficient to supply them and their 
families, which will quickly be, and to spare, if they 
follow the English husbandry, as they do in New Eng- 



86 



HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA. 



land and New York, and get winter fodder for their 
stock." Finally, the candid Penn recommends that 
none should make up their minds hastily, all get the 
consent of their friends or relatives, and all pray God 
for his blessing on their honest endeavors. 

During all the rest of this year and of 1682 and up 
to the moment of his embarkation from Europe, Wil- 
liam Penn was most busily and absorbingly engaged 
in the multifarious preparations for his new planta- 
tions. He drew up a great variety of papers, conces- 
sions, conditions, charters, statutes, constitutions, etc., 
equal to the average work of half a dozen congres- 
sional committees. As much of this matter is unique 
and highly characteristic, we think it best to group it 
all together in a separate chapter (next succeeding 
this), so as to present as full and accurate a picture as 
can he made of Penn as a law-giver and a statesman. 
In addition to work of this sort, requiring concentrated 
and abstracted thought and study, his correspond- 
ence was of the most voluminous character, and he 
was further most actively employed in disposing of 
lands and superintending the sailing of ship-loads of 
his colonists. The first of these papers on concessions 
and conditions was prepared indeed on the eve of the 
sailing of the first vessels containing his " adven- 
turers." This was in July, and the vessels arrived 
out in October. Every paper he published called 
forth numerous letters from his friends, who wanted 
him to explain this or that obscure point to them, and 
he always seems to have responded cheerfully to these 
exhaustive taxes upon his time. His work seems to 
have attracted great attention and commanded admi- 
ration. James Claypoole writes (July 22d), " I have 
begun my letter on too little a piece of paper to give 
thee my judgment of Pennsylvania, but, in short, I, 
and many others wiser than I am, do very much ap- 
prove of it, and do judge William Penn as fit a man 
as any one in Europe to plant a country." Penn had 
also been busily negotiating with the Duke of York 
for the lands now constituting the State of Delaware, 
which were the duke's property, and which Penn 
wanted to possess in order to insure to his own prov- 
ince the free navigation of the Delaware, and perhaps 
also to keep this adjacent territory from falling into 
the hands of his neighbor, Lord Baltimore, who 
claimed it under his charter. But Sir John Werden, 
the duke's agent, still held off and gave Penn much 
trouble and uneasiness. The latter had received a 
tempting offer from a company of Marylanders of 
.£6000 cash and two and'a half per cent, royalty for the 
monopoly of the Indian (fur) trade between the Dela- 
ware and Susquehanna Rivers, but he refused it upon 
noble grounds. The Lord had given him his prov- 
ince, he said, over all and great opposition, and " I 
would not abuse His love, nor act unworthy of His 
providence, and so defile what came to me clean. No ! 
let the Lord guide me by His wisdom and preserve 
me to honor His name and serve His truth and 
people, that an example and standard may be set up to 



the nations ; there may be room there, though none here." 
So also he refused to abate the quit-rents, even to his 
most intimate friends, "intending," as Claypoole wrote, 
"to do equal by all," but he did reduce them from a 
penny to a half-penny in favor of servants settling on 
their fifty-acre lots after having served their time. 
Subsequently, as we shall see, Penn was less rigidly 
moral in his land contracts. In lieu of the proposed 
monopoly, Penn made very liberal concessions of land 
and privileges to another company, "The Free Society 
of Traders," whose plans he favored and whose con- 
stitution and charter he helped to draw. This work 
will be described farther on. 

Notwithstanding all these and many other neavy 
and pressing engagements, Penn seems to have found 
time to attend to his work as a preacher and a writer 
of religious tracts and pamphlets. He went on a 
mission tour into the West of England, he wrote on 
"Spiritual Commission," he mediated between dis- 
senting Friends, and healed a breach in his church ; 
his benevolent endeavors were given to aid and en- 
courage the Bristol Quakers, then severely persecuted, 
and he barely escaped being sent to jail himself for 
preaching in London at the Grace Church Street 
meeting. 

Penn had expected to go out to Pennsylvania him- 
self late in the fall of 1681, but the pressure of all 
these concerns and the rush of emigrants and colo- 
nists delayed him. He found he would have settlers 
from France, Holland, and Scotland, as well as from 
England, and few besides servants would be ready to 
go before the spring of 1682. " When they go, I go," 
he wrote to his friend, James Harrison, " but my 
going with servants will not settle a government, the 
great end of my going." He also said in this letter 
that in selling or renting land he cleared the king's 
and the Indian title, the purchaser or lessee paid the 
scrivener and surveyor. In October Penn sent out 
three commissioners, William Crispin, John Bezar, 
and Nathaniel Allen, to co-operate with Markham in 
selecting a site for Penn's proposed great city, and to 
lay it out. They also were given very full, careful, 
and explicit instructions by Penn, particularly as to 
dealing with the Indians, some Indian titles needing 
to be extinguished by them. He wrote a letter to 
the Indians themselves by these commissioners, which 
shows he had studied the savage character very care- 
fully. It touched the Indian's faith in the one uni- 
versal Great Spirit, and finely appealed to his strong 
innate sense of justice. He did not wish to enjoy the 
great province his king had given him, he said, with- 
out the Indians' consent. The red man had suffered 
much injustice from his countrymen, but this was the 
work of self-seekers ; " but I am not such a man, as is 
well known in my own country , I have a great love 
and regard for you, and I desire to win and gain your 
love and friendship by a kind, just, and peaceable 
life, and the people I send are all of the same mind, 
and shall in all things behave themselves accordingly, 



WILLIAM PENN AS A STATESMAN. 



87 



and if in anything any shall offend you or your peo- 
ple, you shall have a full and speedy satisfaction for 
the same by an equal number of just men on both 
sides, that by no means you may have just occasion 
of being offended against them." This was the in- 
itiatory step in that "traditional policy" of Penn and 
the Quakers towards the Indians which has been so 
consistently maintained ever since, to the imperish- 
able honor of that sect. 

As the year 1682 entered we find Penn reported to 
be " extraordinarily busy" about his province and its 
affairs. He is selling or leasing a great deal of land, 
and sending out many servants. A thousand persons 
are going to emigrate along with him. He gets Clay- 
poole to write to his correspondent in Bordeaux for 
grape-vines, fifteen hundred or two thousand plants, 
to carry out with him, desiring vines that bear the 
best grapes, not the most. Claypoole has himself 
bought five thousand acres, wants to go out and settle, 
but doubts and fears. He don't feel sure about the 
climate, the savages, the water, the vermin, reptiles, 
etc. April 4th Penn finally ratified the charter of his 
Free Society of Traders, and erected their land into 
•a manor. They had taken twenty thousand acres 
in a single block. Their constitution was now at 
once promulgated and subscriptions solicited. April 
18th Penn sends out Capt. Thomas Holme, duly com- 
missioned to act as surveyor-general of Pennsylvania, 
with detailed instructions how to act. Holme sails 
in the ship " Amity," along with Claypoole's son 
John, April 23d. On May 5th Penn publishes his 
■"Frame of Government," following it with his precis 
of new statutes for the Pennsylvania Assembly to act 
upon. By June 1st Penn had made the extraordi- 
nary sale of five hundred and sixty-five thousand five 
hundred acres of land in the new province, in parcels 
of from two hundred and fifty to twenty thousand 
acres. Penn's mother died about this time, causing 
him much affliction. The Free Society of Traders is 
organized, Claypoole makes up his mind at last to 
emigrate, the site for Philadelphia is determined, and 
Markham buys up Indian titles and settlers' land upon 
it, so as to have all clear for the coming great city. 
August 31st the Duke of York gives Penn a protec- 
tive deed for Pennsylvania, and on the 24th the Duke 
finally concedes New Castle and Horekill (Delaware) 
to him by deed of feoffment. This concludes the 
major part of Penn's business in England, and he is 
ready to sail Sept. 1, 1682, in the ship " Welcome,'' 
three hundred tons, Capt. Robert Greenway, master. 
It is then that he writes the touching letter to his 
wife and children, from which we have already quoted. 
He embarked at Deal with a large company of 
Quakers, and from the Downs sent a letter of "salu- 
tation to all faithful friends in England." 



CHAPTER VIII. 

WILLIAM PENN AS A LAW-GIVER AND STATES- 
MAN. 

Here, while the "Welcome" is on the ocean strug- 
gling with the waves, and her passengers are mostly 
down with the smallpox, faithfully ministered to by 
Penn and his friend Robert Pearson, seems to be the 
proper place to discuss the great founder's legislative 
principles, measures, statutes, ordinances, and regu- 
lations, with a view not only to illustrate the main 
subject of these volumes, but also to ascertain Penn's 
real merits as a statesman and a framer of laws. He 
has been greatly and perhaps indiscriminately praised 
for his performances in this sphere, but it is not over- 
praise in view of the fact that what he did was rather 
upon theory than after a full experience. Penn had 
had no real legislative practice, and the knowledge 
of law which he acquired during his brief and inter- 
rupted studies at Lincoln's Inn could not have been 
either thorough or extensive. He never was in Par- 
liament; his acquaintance with affairs both at West- 
minster and Whitehall was chiefly through the lobby 
and not in the halls. But he had read much, thought 
deeply, and the candor and genuineness of purpose 
which characterized him afforded him material as- 
sistance in arriving promptly at just conclusions 
from sound premises. He was rather practical than 
logical in his mental processes, but his strong good 
sense never deserted him, and this gives a directness, 
a consistency, and an apparent simplicity to his sys- 
tem which make it look even more admirable than it 
actually is. It has been positively asserted and as 
positively denied that he owed the best part of his 
system to Algernon Sidney. It is known that he 
often consulted Sidney and Sir William Petty, as 
well as many other of his friends, and that he was 
eager for advice from every quarter. Probably he 
was counseled also by Halifax, Hyde, and Suther- 
land from the abundance of their parliamentary and 
cabinet political experiences. But the constitution, 
laws, instructions, circulars, concessions, commissions, 
letters, etc., which emanated from Penn during those 
two most busy years all have the same general ear- 
mark. . They are William Penn's work, and William 
Penn was a Quaker of an oppressed and persecuted 
sect, at the same time that he was a courtier deeply 
indebted to the bigoted Duke of York. If we do 
not remember these things we will not be able to put 
a fair and intelligible interpretation upon Penn's 
legislative work. 

But first let us, avoiding repetitions, present a con- 
densed summary of what that work was. Abstracts 
of the charter or patent for Pennsylvania and of 
Penn's first prospectus of the province and the con- 
ditions of emigration have already been given, and 
we have seen how shrewdly Penn, as attorney for him- 
self and his province, managed affairs before the cum- 



HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA. 



mittee of the Privy Council and with the Duke of 
York and his agent in the matter of the Delaware 
Hundreds. His clever handicraft has also been illus- 
trated in the conduct of the complicated affairs of 
Berkeley and Carteret, Billinge and Fenwick, and the 
East and West New Jersey Plantations. The leading 
documents relating to Pennsylvania, in which Penn's 
hand directed matter and text, from the execution of 
the patent down to the moment of the " Welcome's" 
sailing, naturally group themselves into two classes : 
first, practical executive work ; second, fundamental 
law-making, with theoretical declarations of prin- 
ciples and rules of interpretation. It is necessary, 
therefore, to look at Penn in this place in the double 
light of the business manager of a great incorpor- 
ated speculation, the Holy Experiment, as he himself 
called it in a letter, and as a speculative philosopher, 
like Hobbes, Locke, or Bentham, seeking to evolve 
constitutions out of the blended action of his own 
consciousness, his reading, and his knowledge of men 
and the world. 

In the general conduct of his experiment, while 
attributing everything to Providence, Penn did not 
neglect worldly devices of a very shrewd sort. He 
advertised his province with great pains, very exten- 
sively and very attractively. By the time he was ready 
to sail it had attracted a general and lively interest 
throughout Europe, and especially among those per- 
secuted sects among whom Penn's ministry had fallen 
in the course of his visits to the Continent. The 
Walloons, the Mennonites or Mennists, the Laba- 
dists, the various Reformed German sects and heresies 
from Protestantism and Romanism, watched the ex- 
periment as closely as the Quakers did. Penn made 
the terms on which settlers would be received very 
plain, and he stated perspicaciously in advance the 
probable cost of living and the probable average of 
hardships for which immigrants into the new province 
must prepare themselves. This was not only charac- 
teristically candid, it was eminently politic. It fore- 
stalled disappointment, it prevented the access of un- 
desirable adventurers, and it tended to increase the 
number of substantial "bone and sinew" planters, 
who might have recoiled before imaginary perils, but 
who laughed at the little catalogue of petty incon- 
veniences and hardships which he displayed before 
them. In the regulations for colonists set forth in 
his statement of " certain conditions or concessions 
agreed upon by William Penn, proprietary and Gov- 
ernor of Pennsylvania, and those who are the adven- 
turers and purchasers in that province, the 11th of 
July, 1681," the system of plantation is plainly de- 
scribed. First, a large city is to be laid off on navi- 
gable water, divided into lots, and purchasers of large 
tracts of lands (five thousand acres) are to have one 
of these city lots assigned them, the location deter- 
mined by chance. It was Penn's original plan to 
have his great city consist of ten thousand acres, di- 
vided into one hundred lots of one hundred acres 



each, one of these lots to be awarded (by lot) to each 
purchaser of a tract of manorial proportions, who 
was to build in the centre of his lot and surround his 
house with gardens and orchards, " that it may be a 
green country town," he said, " which will never be 
burnt and always be wholesome." 1 Of course no great 
city could be built on any such plan, and Penn him- 
self abandoned it or greatly modified it even before 
he sailed, the commissioners and surveyor finding it 
impossible to observe the conditions, especially when 
vessels began to be numerous along the water-front 
and business sprang up. This system of great farms, 
with a central township divided into minor lots, 
Penn proposed to extend all over the province. His 
road system was excellent. Roads were to be built 
not less than forty feet wide from city to city, on air- 
lines as nearly as possible; all streets were to be laid 
off at right angles, and of liberal width, and no build- 
ings were to be allowed to encroach on these, nor was 
any irregular building to be permitted. This rule of 
symmetry, amounting to formality, could not be car- 
ried out any more than the great city plan. It was 
not Penn's notion probably, for he was not a pre- 
cisian in anything, and it looks much more like a 
contrivance borrowed by him for the nonce from Sir 
William Petty, Sir Thomas Browne, or some other 
hare-brain among his contemporaries. Penn's system 
of quit-rents and of manors also, the foundations of a 
great fortune, resembled closely that of Lord Balti- 
more in Maryland. It is likely that Penn got the 
idea where Baltimore derived his, from Ireland, that 
form of irredeemable ground-rent being an old and 
familiar Irish tenure. 2 The quit-rent system caused 
almost immediate discontent in Pennsylvania, and 
undoubtedly injured the proprietary's popularity and 
interfered with his income. His large reservations of 
choice lots in every section that was laid out contrib- 
uted to this also. 

Every person was to enjoy access to and use of 
water-courses, mines, quarries, etc., and any one could 
dig for metals anywhere, bound only to pay for dam- 
ages done. Settlers were required to plant land sur- 
veyed for them within three years. Goods for export 
could only be bought or sold, in any case, in public 
market, and fraud and deception were to be punished 
by forfeiture of the goods. All trading with Indians 
was to be done in open market, and fraud upon them 
prevented by inspection of goods. Offenses against 
Indians were to be punished just as those against the 
whites, and disputes between the two races to be 
settled by a mixed jury. Indians to have the same 
privileges as the whites in improving their lands and 



1 Instructions to commissioners for settling the colony, Oct. 10, 16S1. 

2 This lias been conclusively shown in some opinions (published in 
the Maryland Reports) of the judges of the Maryland Court of Appeals. 
These opinions were given in interpretation of leases " for ninety-nine 
years, renewable forever. 1 ' It was decided that those leaBes were per- 
petual, and their historical relation to the Irish leases was demonstrated 
in order to establish the fact of their irredeemable character. 



WILLIAM PENN AS A STATESMAN. 



89 



raising crops. Stock not marked within three months 
after coming into the possession of planters to be for- 
feited to the Governor. In clearing land, one-fifth to 
be left in wood, and oak and mulberry trees to be 
preserved for ship-building. To prevent debtors from 
furtively absconding, no one was to leave the province 
until after three weeks' publication of the fact. 

In his instructions to the commissioners for laying 
out the province, Penn enlarges upon the plan for 
the great town, which is to be located on his side the 
Delaware, where "it is most navigable, high, dry, 
and healthy ; that is, where most ships may best 
ride, of deepest draught of water, if possible to load 
or unload at the bank or key side, without boating 
or lightering of it." Other things are to be postponed 
until this site is chosen and laid out. If the place 
selected has settlers on it, they are to be removed, 
either by buying their lands or giving them other 
tracts in exchange. 1 In dealing with Indians the 
commissioners are bidden to be tender of offending 
them, but to make sure, " by honest spies," that no 
one is instructing them to stand off for higher prices. 
Give them plenty of love, says Penn in effect, but 
do not pay too much for their land, and do not let 
them sell you what does not belong to them. " Be 
grave; they love not to be smiled on." The com- 
missioners are forbidden to sell any islands ; they are 
to lay off the streets in a rectangular way, to preserve 
a broad water-front, to reserve a central lot of three 
hundred acres for the Governor's house, and in other 
matters to be guided by circumstances and their own 
discretion. 3 

The charter to the Pennsylvania Company, the Free 
Society of Traders, bears date March 24, 1682. The 
incorporators named in Penn's deed to them were 
"Nicholas Moore, of London, medical doctor; James 
Claypoole, merchant; Philip Ford (Penn's unworthy 
steward); William Sherloe, of London, merchant; 
Edward Pierce, of London, leather-seller ; John Sym- 
cock and Thomas Brassey, of Cheshire, yeoman ; 
Thomas Baker, of London, wine-cooper ; and Ed- 
ward Brookes, of London, grocer." The deed recites 
Penn's authority under his patent, mentions the con- 
veyance to the company of twenty thousand acres, 
erects this tract into the manor of Frank, " in free 
and common socage, by such rents, customs, and 
services as to them and their successors shall seem 
meet, so as to be consistent with said tenure," allows 
them two justices' courts a year, privilege of court- 
baron and court-leet and view of frank-pledge, with 

1 Penn balances this direction very closely between thrift and con- 
science. He says, " Herein [in buying or exchanging these lands] be as 
sparing as ever you can, and urge the weak bottom of their grant, the Duke 
of York never having had a grant from the King, etc. Be impartially 
just and courteous to all, that is pleasing to the Lord and wise in itself.' 1 '' 
Yet Penn, like Svenson and the other SwedeB, had bought his title, just 
as they did, of the Indians and the Duke of York. 

2 This interesting paper was signed in London, Sept. 30, 1681, with 
Richard Vickery, Charles Jones, Jr., Ealph Withers, Thomas Callow- 
hill, and Philip Th. Lehnmann as witnesses. 



all the authority requisite in the premises. The so- 
ciety is authorized to appoint and remove its officers 
and servants, is given privilege of free transportation 
of its goods and products, and exempted from any but 
necessary State and local taxes, while at the same 
time it can levy all needful taxes for its own support 
within its own limits. Its chief officers are commis- 
sioned as magistrates and charged to keep the peace, 
with jurisdiction in case of felony, riot, or disorder 
of any kind. It is given three representatives in the 
Provincial Council, title to three-fifths of the products 
of all mines and minerals found, free privilege to fish 
in all the waters of the province, and to establish 
fairs, markets, etc., and the books of the society are 
exempted from all inspection. The society imme- 
diately prepared and published an address, with its 
constitution and by-laws, in which a very extensive 
field of operation is mapped out. The address, which 
is ingenious, points to the fact that while it proposes 
to employ the principle of association in order to 
conduct a large business, it is no monopoly, but an 
absolutely free society in a free country. "It is," 
says this prospectus, " an enduring estate, and a last- 
ing as well as certain credit ; a portion and inherit- 
ance that is clear and growing, free from the mischief 
of frauds and false securities, supported by the con- 
current strength and care of a great and prudent 
body, a kind of perpetual trustees, the friend of the 
widow and orphan, for it takes no advantage of 
minority or simplicity." s 

Penn's commission to Capt. Thomas Holme as 
surveyor-general is dated April 18th. It contains 
nothing salient beyond the ordinary terms of such 
instruments. All this executive department work 
recorded above shows Penn in the light of a skillful, 
thrifty administrator, well instructed even in the 
minutest details of his business, and always looking 
out shrewdly for his own interests. On April 25th 
he published his " frame of government," or, as 
James Claypoole called it in one of his letters, "the 
fundamentals for government," — in effect, the first 



3 In this society votes were to be on basis of amount of stock held, 
up to three votes, which was the limit. No one in England was allowed 
more than one vote, and proxies could be voted. The officers were presi- 
dent, deputy, treasurer, secretary, and twelve committee-men. Five, 
with president or deputy, a quorum. Committee-men to have but one 
vote each in meetings, with the casting vote to the president. Officers 
to hold during seven years on good behavior ; general election and re- 
opening of subscriptiou books every seventh year ; general statement at 
the end of each business year. The officers to live on society's prop- 
erty. All the society's servants were bound to secrecy, and the books 
•were kept in society's house, under three locks, the keys in charge of 
president, treasurer, and oldest committee-man, and not to be intrusted 
to any person longer than to transcribe any part in daytime and iu the 
house, before Beven persons appointed by committee. The society was 
to send two hundred servants to Pennsylvania the fir6t year, to build 
two or more general factories in Pennsylvania, one on Chesapeake Bay, 
one on Delaware or elsewhere; to aid Indians in building houses, etc. 
and to hold negroes for fourteen years' service, when they were to go 
free, "on giving to the Bociety two-thirds of what they can produce on 
land allotted to them by the society, with a stock and tools ; if they agree 
not to this, to be servants till they do." Theleadingolijectuf thesoclety 
at the outset Beems to have been an extensive free trade wi Hi the Indians. 



90 



HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA. 



Constitution of Pennsylvania. Hepworth Dixon 
claims that in the composition of this instrument 
Penn received so much aid from Algernon Sidney 
"that it is quite impossible to separate the exact 
share of one legislator from that of the other." On 
the contrary, others of Penn's biographers see nothing 
in it but Penn's work under the inspiration of George 
Pox's " inner light." A careful examination of the 
document itself, however, and the preamble will, it 
is believed, establish it as a genuine production of 
the author of the " concessions and conditions of 
settlement" and the "instructions to the commission- 
ers," which have been analyzed above. It is the 
work of William Penn, and reflects precisely some of 
the brightest and some of the much less bright traits 
of his genius and character. 

The document is entitled "The frame of the gov- 
ernment of the province of Pennsylvania, in America, 
together with certain laws agreed upon in England 
by the governor and divers freemen of the aforesaid 
province, to be further explained and continued 
there by the first provincial council that shall be 
held, if they see meet." 

The " preface" or preamble to this Constitution is 
curious, for it is written as if Penn felt that the eyes 
of the court were upon him. The first two para- 
graphs form a simple excursus upon the doctrine of 
the law and the transgressor as expounded in St. 
Paul's Epistle to the Romans : " For we know that 
the law is spiritual: but I am carnal, sold under sin," 
etc. From this Penn derives, not very perspicu- 
ously, however, "the divine right of government," 
the object of government being twofold, to terrify 
evil-doers and to cherish those that do well, "which 
gives government a life beyond corruption [i.e., divine 
right], and makes it as durable in the world as good 
men shall be." Hence Penn thinks that govern- 
ment seems like a part of religion itself, a thing 
sacred in its institution and end. 1 "They weakly 



1 Compare this with Penn's pamphlet of 1679, called "An Address to 
all Protestants, 1 ' where he says, " The fourth great ecclesiastical evil is 
preferring human authority above reason and truth," and at the same 
time abuses the accredited State administrators of religion as the greatest 
obstacles to faith. " Is not prophecy, once the church's, now engrossed 
by them and wholly in their bands ? Who dare publicly preach or pray 
that is not of their order? Have they not only the keys in keeping? 
May anybody else pretend to the power of absolution or excommunica- 
tion, much less to constitute ministers? Are not all church rites and 
privileges in their hands? Do not they make it their proper inherit- 
ance? Nay, so much larger is their empire than Cajsar'B that only they 
begin with births and end with burials- men must pay them for coming 
in and going out of the world. ThnB their profits run from the womb 
to the grave, and that which is the loss of others IB their gain and part 
of their revenue. . . . The minister is chooser and taster and everything 
for them (the people). . . . They seem to have delivered up their spirit- 
ual selves, and made over the business of religion— the rights of their 
ao uls — to their pastor, and that scarcely with any limitation of truth, 
too. And as if he were, or could be, their guarantee in the other world, 
they become very unsolicitous of any further search here. So that if we 
would examine the respective parishes of Protestant as well as Papish 
countries, we shall find it come to that sad pasB that very few have any 
other religion than the tradition of their priestB. They have given up 
their judgment to him, and seem greatly at their ease that they have 



err," continues Penn, in an admirable sentence, the 
clearest possible anticipation of modern convictions 
in regard to penatory institutions, " they weakly err 
that think there is no other use of government than 
correction, which is the coarsest part of it." He de- 
clines saying much of "particular frames and modes,'' 
for the reason that men are so hard to please. " It is 
true they seem to agree in the end, to wit, happi- 
ness, but in the means they differ. . . Men side 
with their passions against their reason, and their 
sinister interests have so strong a bias upon their 
minds that they lean to them against the good of the 
things they know." 

The form, he concludes, does not matter much after 
all. " Any government is free to the people under it 
(whatever be the frame) where the laws rule and the 
people are a party to these laws." Good men are to be 
preferred even above good laws, and that which makes 
a good constitution must keep it, he says, to wit, men 
of wisdom and virtue. The frame of laws now pub- 
lished, Penn adds, has been carefully contrived " to 
support power in reverence with the people, and to 
secure the people from the abuse of power." This 
is very nicely balanced, but it scarcely harmonizes 
with the letter referred to previously which Penn sent 
out to the people of his province by Markham, 
promising them freedom to make their own laws and 
govern themselves. 

In the Constitution, which follows the preamble, 
Penn begins by confirming to the freemen of the 
province all the liberties, franchises, and properties 
secured to them by the patent of King Charles II. 
The government of the province is to consist of " the 
Governor and freemen of the said province, in form 
of a Provincial Council and General Assembly, by 
whom all laws shall be made, officers chosen, and 
public affairs transacted." The Council, of seventy- 
two members, is to be elected at once, one-third of 
the members to go out, and their successors elected 
each year, and after the first seven years those going 
out each year shall not be returned within a year. 
Two-thirds of the Council are required to constitute 
a quorum, except in minor matters, when twenty- 
four will suffice. The Governor is always to preside 
over the sessions of Council, and is to have three votes. 
"The Governor and Provincial Council shall prepare 
and propose to the General Assembly hereafter men- 
tioned all bills which they shall at any time think fit 
to be passed into laws within the said province, . . . 
and on the ninth day from their so meeting, the said 
General Assembly, after reading over the proposed 
bills by the clerk of the Provincial Council, and the 
occasion and motives for them being opened by the 
Governor or his deputy, shall give their affirmative or 
negative, which to them seemeth best, . . . and the 

discharged themselveB of the trouble of ' working out their own salva- 
tion, and proving all things, that they might hold fast that which is 
good, 1 and in the room of that care bequeathed the charge of these 
affairs to a standing pensioner for that purpose. 11 



WILLIAM PENN AS A STATESMAN. 



91 



laws so prepared and proposed as aforesaid that are 
assented to by the General Assembly shall be enrolled 
as laws of the province, with this style : ' By the 
Governor, with the assent and approbation of the 
freemen in the Provincial Council and General As- 
sembly.' " Here is the fatal defect of Penn's Consti- 
tution, a defect which robs it of even any pretence of 
being republican or democratic in form or substance. 
The Assembly, the popular body, the representatives 
of the people, are restricted simply to a veto power. 
They cannot originate bills ; they cannot even debate 
them ; they are not allowed to think or act for them- 
selves or those they represent, but have nothing to do 
except vote "yes" or " no." To be sure, the Council 
is an elective body too. But it is meant to consist of 
the Governor's friends. It is the aristocratic body. 
It does not come fresh from the people. The tenure 
of its members is three years. Besides, for ordinary 
business, twenty-four of the Council make a quorum, 
of whom twelve, with the Governor's casting vote, 
comprise a majority. The Governor has three votes ; 
the Free Society of Traders six; if the Governor 
have three or four friends in Council, with the 
support of this society he can control all legisla- 
tion. It seems incredible that William Penn should 
have of his own free will permitted this blemish upon 
his Constitution, which he claimed gave all the power 
of government and law-making into the hands of the 
people. 

It is impossible for Penn to have acted ignorantly 
or unadvisedly in this matter. He was born amid the 
thunder of the great struggle, in the very hour of the 
triumph of the English Parliament over the executive 
upon this very issue of the power of the Commons to 
originate bills, a contest that had been going on for 
three hundred years, and had been incessantly waged 
since the beginning of the reign of King Edward III. 
He could not help knowing that this question had 
been fought out, or was still cause for battle between 
Governor and Council and the popular Assembly in 
every American colony. He was too familiar with 
our colonial history to have forgotten the inaugura- 
tion of the Virginia House of Burgesses in 1619, and 
how, successively in each colony as it was formed, in 
the language of Bancroft, " popular assemblies burst 
everywhere into life with a consciousness of their im- 
portance and an immediate capacity for efficient legis- 
lation." * Why was it, then, that Penn, who certainly 

1 The Virginia Burgesses were first summoned July 30, 1619, two each 
from three cities, three hundreds, three plantations, Argall's Gift, and 
Kiccowtan. They met together with Governor and Council until 1680, 
when, under Lord Colepepper's government, the two houses separated. 
— (Beverly.) In Massachusetts, May 19, 1634, twenty-five delegates, 
chosen hy the freemen of the towns of their own motion, appeared and 
claimed a share in mailing the laws. The claim was allowed and they 
became members of the General Court. In Connecticut the popular 
body was first provided for Jan. 14, 1639. In Maryland the first House 
of Burgesses dates from February, 1G39, and they soon voided the au- 
thority of the Governor and Council, under the charter, to originate 
bills. In Rhode Island the power of popular assemblies dates from May, 
1647. In North Carolina, in spite of Locke's aristocratic constitution, 



desired popular freedom, and sought anything else 
rather than the investment of arbitrary power in his 
own office and that of the Governor's advisers, fol- 
lowed in the footsteps of Lord Baltimore and John 
Locke, and attempted to deprive his popular assem- 
bly of every actual legislative function? We think 
the reason is plain that it was only by promising to 
construct his proprietary government after this model 
he was able to secure his patent at all. His relations 
with the Duke of York have been set forth. When, in 
1675, the committee of the Privy Council was given 
charge of colonial affairs, the Duke of Albemarle 
(Monk) was chairman, but the Duke of York was the 
most active and controlling spirit of the committee. 
When Halifax opposed the attempt to subvert the 
autonomy of the colonies, and bring them directly 
under the sovereign power of the throne, he was dis- 
missed from office, and the Privy Council voted that 
Governors and Councils of colonies " should not be 
obliged to call assemblies from the country to make 
taxes and to regulate other important matters, but that 
they should do what they should judge proper, render- 
ing an account only to his Britannic majesty." This 
action was not finally taken till 1684, but it represented 
the well-matured views of the Duke of York, who had 
long held that colonies did not need General Assem- 
blies, and ought not to have them. Penn was fully 
acquainted with these views and bowed in deference to 
them. He stooped to conquer. He waived his prin- 
ciples in order to secure his province, feeling that 
good must come from that establishment in innumer- 
able ways. 

Aside from this fatal piece of subservience there is 
much to praise in Penn's Constitution and something 
to wonder at, as being so far in advance of his age. 
The executive functions of Governor and Council are 
carefully defined and limited. A wholesome and lib- 
eral provision is made for education, public schools, 
inventions, and useful scientific discoveries. 2 

The Provincial Council, for the more prompt dis- 
patch of business, was to be divided into four com- 
mittees, — one to have charge of plantations, "to sit- 
uate and settle cities, posts, and market-towns and 
highways, and to have and decide all suits and con- 
troversies relating to plantations," one to be a com- 
mittee of justice and safety, one of trade and treasury, 
and the fourth of manners, education, and arts, "that 



this power has existed since 1667. In New Jersey the Assembly of rep- 
resentatives, "with law-making power, is as old as 1668. In South Caro- 
lina the freemen took part in law-making, through their delegates, from 
1674. In New Hampshire the law-makiug power resided in the Assem- 
bly from March 16, 1680. 

2 In the preamble Penn layB down a doctrine now universally recog- 
nized, and the general acceptance of which, it is believed, affords the 
surest guarantee for the perpetuity of American institutions: that vir- 
tue and wisdom, " because they descend not with worldly inheritances, 
must be carefully propagated by a virtuous education of youth, for which 
after-ages will owe more to the care and prudence of founders and the 
successive magistracy than to their parents for their private patrimo- 
nies." No great truth could be more fully and nobly expressed than 
this. 



92 



HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA. 



all wicked and scandalous living may be prevented, 
and that youth may be successively trained up in vir- 
tue and useful knowledge and arts." 

The General Assembly was to be elected yearly, 
not to exceed two hundred members, representing all 
the freemen of the province. They were to meet in 
the capital on "the 20th day of the second month," 
and during eight days were expected to freely confer 
with one another and the Council, and, if they chose, 
to make suggestions to the Council committees about 
the amendment or alteration of bills (all such as the 
Council proposed to offer for adoption being pub- 
lished three weeks beforehand), and on the ninth 
day were to vote, " not less than two-thirds making a 
quorum in the passing of laws and choice of such 
officers as are by them to be chosen." The General 
Assembly was to nominate a list of judges, treasurers, 
sheriffs, justices, coroners, etc., two for each office, 
from which list the Governor and Council were to 
select the officers to serve. The body was to adjourn 
upon being served with notice that the Governor and 
Council had no further business to lay before them, 
and to assemble again upon the summons of the Gov- 
ernor and Council. Elections were to be by ballot, 
and so were questions of impeachment in the Assem- 
bly and judgment of criminals in the Council. In 
case the proprietary be a minor, and no guardian has 
been appointed in writing by his father, the Council 
was to appoint a commission of three guardians to 
act as Governor during such minority. No business 
was to be done by the Governor, Council, or Assem- 
bly on Sunday, except in cases of emergency. The 
Constitution could not be altered without the consent 
of the Governor and six-sevenths of the Council and 
the General Assembly. (Such a rule, if enforced, 
would have perpetuated any Constitution, however 
bad.) Finally Penn solemnly declared "that neither 
I, my heirs nor assigns, shall procure or do anything 
or things whereby the liberties in this charter con- 
tained and expressed shall be infringed or broken ; 
and if anything be procured by any person or per- 
sons contrary to these premises it shall be held of 
no force or effect." 

On May 15th Penn's code of laws, passed in Eng- 
land, to be altered or amended in Pennsylvania, was 
promulgated. It consists of forty statutes, the first 
of which declares the charter or Constitution which 
has just been analyzed to be " fundamental in the 
government itself." The second establishes the qual- 
ifications of a freeman (or voter or elector). These 
include every purchaser of one hundred acres of land, 
every tenant of one hundred acres, at a penny an acre 
quit-rent, who has paid his own passage across the 
ocean and cultivated ten acres of his holding, every 
freeman who has taken up fifty acres and cul- 
tivated twenty, "and every inhabitant, artificer, or 
other resident in the said province that pays scot and 
lot to the government." All these electors are also 
eligible to election both to Council and Assembly. 



Elections must be free and voluntary, and electors 
who take bribes shall forfeit their votes, while those 
offering bribes forfeit their election, the Council 
and Assembly to be sole judges of the regularity of 
the election of their members. 

" No money or goods shall be raised upon or paid 
by any of the people of this province, by way of pub- 
lic tax, custom, or contribution, but by a law for that 
purpose made." Those violating this statute are to 
be treated as public enemies and betrayers of the 
liberties of the province. 

All courts shall be open, and justice shall neither 
be sold, denied, or delayed. In all courts all persons 
of all (religious) persuasions may freely appear in 
their own way and according to their own manner, 
pleading personally or by friend ; complaint to bo 
exhibited fourteen days before trial, and summons 
issued hot less than ten days before trial, a copy of 
complaint to be delivered to the party complained of 
at his dwelling. No complaint to be received but 
upon the oath or affirmation of complainant that he 
believes in his conscience that his cause to be just. 
Pleadings, processes, and records in court are required 
to be brief, in English, and written plainly so as to 
be understood by all. 

All trials shall be by twelve men, peers, of good 
character, and of the neighborhood. When the 
penalty for the offense to be tried is death the sheriff 
is to summon a grand inquest of twenty-four men, 
twelve at least of whom shall pronounce the com- 
plaint to be true, and then twelve men or peers are 
to be further returned by the sheriff to try the issue 
and have the final judgment. This trial jury shall 
always be subject to reasonable challenge. 

Fees are required to be moderate, their amounts set- 
tled by the Legislature, and a table of them hung up 
in every court- room. Any person convicted of charging 
more than the lawful fee shall pay twofold, one-half to 
go to the wronged party, while the offender shall be dis- 
missed. All persons wrongfully imprisoned or prose- 
cuted at law shall have double damages against the 
informer or prosecutor. 

All prisons, of which each county is to have one, 
shall be work-houses for felons, vagrants, and loose 
and idle persons. All persons shall be bailable by 
sufficient security, save in capital offenses " where 
the proof is evident or the presumption great." 
Prisons are to be free as to fees, food, and lodging. 

All lands and goods shall be liable to pay debts, 
except where there is legal issue, and then all goods 
and one-third of the land only. (This is meant in 
case a man should die insolvent.) All wills in writing, 
attested by two witnessess, shall be of the same force 
as to lands or other conveyances, being legally 
proved within forty days within or without the prov- 
ince. 

Seven years' quiet possession gives title, except in 
cases of infants, lunatics, married women, or persons 
beyond the seas. 



WILLIAM PENN AS A STATESMAN. 



93 



Bribery and extortion are to be severely punished, 
but fines should be moderate and not exhaustive of 
men's property. 1 

Marriage (not forbidden by the degrees of consan- 
guinity or affinity) shall be encouraged, but parents 
or guardians must first be consulted, and publication 
made before solemnization ; the ceremony to be by 
taking one another as husband and wife in the 
presence of witnesses, to be followed by a certificate 
signed by parties and witnesses, and recorded in the 
office of the county register. All deeds, charters, 
grants, conveyances, long notes, bonds, etc., are re- 
quired to be registered also in the county enrollment 
office within two months after they are executed, 
otherwise to be void. Similar deeds made out of the 
province were allowed six months in which to be 
registered before becoming invalid. 

All defacers or corrupters of legal instruments or 
registries shall make double satisfaction, half to the 
party wronged, be dismissed from place, and disgraced 
as false men. 

A separate registry of births, marriages, deaths, 
burials, wills, and letters of administration is required 
to be kept. 

All property of felons is liable for double satisfac- 
tion, half to the party wronged ; when there is no 
land the satisfaction must be worked out in prison ; 
while estates of capital offenders are escheated, one- 
third to go to the next of kin of the sufferer and the 
remainder to next of kin of criminal. 

Witnesses must promise to speak the truth, the 
whole truth, etc., and if convicted of willful falsehood 
shall suffer the penalty which would have been inflicted 
upon the person accused, shall make satisfaction to 
the party wronged, and be publicly exposed as false 
witnesses, never to be credited in any court or before 
any magistrate in the province. 

Public officers shall hold but one office at a time; 
all children more than twelve years old shall be taught 
some useful trade; servants shall not be kept longer 
than their time, must be well treated if deserving, and 
at the end of their term be '' put in fitting equipage, 
according to custom." 

Scandal-mongers, back-biters, defamers, and spread- 
ers of false news, whether against public or private 
persons, are to be severely punished as enemies to 
peace and concord. Factors and others guilty of 
breach of trust must make satisfaction, and one-third 
over, to their employers, and in case of the factor's 
death the Council Committee of Trade is to see that 
satisfaction is made out of his estates. 

All public officers, legislators, etc., must be profes- 
sors of faith in Jesus Christ, of good fame, sober and 
honest convictions, and twenty-one years old. " All 
persons living in this province who confess and ac- 
knowledge the one Almighty and Eternal God to be 

1 " Contenements, merchandise, and wainage," Bays the text, — the 
land by which a man keeps his house, his goods, and his means of trans- 
portation. 



the Creator, Upholder, and Ruler of the world, and 
that hold themselves obliged in conscience to live 
peaceably and justly in civil society, shall in noways 
be molested or prejudiced for their religious persua- 
sion or practice in matters of faith and worship ; nor 
shall they be compelled at any time to frequent or 
maintain any religious worship, place, or ministry 
whatever." The people are required to respect Sun- 
day by abstaining from daily labor. All "offenses 
against God," swearing, cursing, lying, profane talk- 
ing, drunkenness, drinking of healths, obscenity, 
whoredom and other uncleanness, treasons, mispris- 
ions, murders, duels, felony, sedition, maimings, for- 
cible entries and other violence, all prizes, stage- 
plays, cards, dice, May-games, gamesters, masks, 
revels, bull-baitings, cock-fightings, and the like, 
" which excite the people to rudeness, cruelty, loose- 
ness, and irreligion, shall be respectively discouraged 
and severely punished, according to the appointment 
of the Governor and freemen in Council and General 
Assembly." 

All other matters not provided for in this code are 
referred to " the order, prudence, and determination" 
of the Governor and Legislature. 

The most admirable parts of this code, putting it 
far ahead of the contemporary jurisprudence of Eng- 
land or any other civilized country at the time, 2 are 
the regulations for liberty of worship and the admin- 
istration of justice. Penn's code on this latter point 
is more than a hundred years in advance of England. 
In the matter of fees, charges, plain and simple forms, 
processes, records, and pleadings, it still remains in 
advance of court proceedings and regulations nearly 
everywhere. The clauses about workrhouses and 

2 But we must except the Catholic colony in Maryland, founded by Sir 
George Calvert, whose charter of 1632 and the act of toleration passed 
by the Assembly of Maryland in 1649, under the inspiration of Sir 
George's son, Cascilius, must be placed alongside of Penn's work. Two 
brighter lights in an age of darkness never shone. Calvert's charter was 
written during the heat of the Thirty Tears' religious war, Penn's Con- 
stitution at the moment when all Dissenters wore persecuted in England 
and when Louis XIV. was about to revoke the Edict of Nantes. The 
VirginianB were expelling the Quakers and other sectaries. In New 
England the Puritan Separatists, themselves refugees for opinion's sake, 
martyrs to the cause of religious freedom, were making laws which were 
the embodiment of doubly distilled intolerance and persecution. Roger 
Williams was banished in 1635, in 1650 the Baptists were sent to the 
whipping-post, in 1634 there was a law passed for the expulsion of Ana- 
baptists, in 1647 for the exclusion of Jesuits, and if they returned they 
were to be put to death. In 1656 it was decreed against " the cursed sect 
of heretics lately risen up in the world, which are commonly called 
Quakers," that captains of ships briuging them in were to be fined or im- 
prisoned, Quaker books, or " writings containing their devilish opinions," 
were not to be imported, Quakers themselves were to be 6ent to the house 
of correction, kept at work, made to remain silent, and severely whipped. 
This was what the contemporaries of Calvert and Penn did. We have 
seen Penn's law of liberty of conscience. Calvert's was equally liberal. 
The charter of Calvert was not to be interpreted so as to work any dim- 
inution of God's sacred Christian religion, open to all Beets, Protestant 
and Catholic, and the act of toleration and all preceding legislation, offi- 
cial oaths, etc., breathed the same spirit of toleration and determination, 
in the wordB of the oath of 1637, that none in the colony, by himself or 
other, directly or indirectly, will "trouble, molest, or discountenance 
any person professing to believe in Jeeus Christ for or on account of his 
religion." 



94 



HISTOEY OF PHILADELPHIA. 



about bailable offenses are also far in advance of even 
the best modern jurisprudence, and the provisions for 
a complete registration of births, etc., have yet to be 
enforced in some of the States closely adjoining Penn- 
sylvania, despite the fact that accurate registries of 
this sort are essential preliminaries to any collection 
of vital statistics. This systematic recording of all 
transactions, public or domestic, has been character- 
istic of the Society of Friends from its earliest begin- 
nings, and their registry and minute-books are now 
filled with historical materials of the most precious 
sort. 



CHAPTER IX. 

FOUNDING THE GREAT CITY— PENN IN PHILADEL- 
PHIA—HIS ADMINISTRATION. 

Penn was very well represented in the new prov- 
ince and his interests intelligently cared for from the 
time that Lieutenant-Governor Brockholls, of New 
York, surrendered the colony until he himself arrived 
and took formal possession. His cousin, Capt. Wil- 
liam Markham, Deputy Governor, as has been seen, 
arrived out in October, 1681, his commissioners, ap- 
pointed for laying out the proposed great city, came 
over towards the end of the year, and his surveyor- 
general, Capt. Thomas Holme, reached Philadelphia 
in the early summer of 1682. The commissioners, as 
originally appointed Sept. 30, 1681, were William Cris- 
pin, Nathaniel Allen, and John Bezar. They sailed 
either in the ship " John and Sarah" or the " Bris- 
tol Factor," taking the southern passage and stopping 
at Barbadoes, where Crispin died. Crispin, the head 
of the commission, was a man of mature years and 
Penn's own kinsman, like Markham. It appears by 
a letter from Penn to Markham, dated London, Oct. 
18, 1681, that Penn intended Crispin to hold high 
office in the new province. He says, "I have sent 
my cosen, William Crispin, to be thy assistant, as by 
Commission will appear. His Skill, experience, In- 
dustry, and Integrity are well known to me, and par- 
ticularly in Court keeping, &c, so yt is my will and 
pleasure that he be as Chief Justice to Keep y e Seal, 
y e Courts and Sessions, & he shall be accountable to 
me for it. The profits redounding are to his proper 
behoof. He will show thee my Instructions wch 
guide you in all y e business, & y e cost is left to your 
discretion ; y' is, to thee, thy two Assistants and y e 
Councel." After telling Markham that if he prefers 
the sea to the deputyship he will procure him the 
profitable command of a passenger-ship to run between 
England and Pennsylvania, he adds : " Pray be very 
respectful to my Cosen Crispin. He is a man my 
father had great confidence in and value for. Also 
strive to give content to the Planters, and with meek- 
ness and sweetness, mixed with authority, carry it so 
as thou mayst honour me as well as thyselfe, and I do 



hereby promess thee I will effectually answer it to 
thee and thyn." In this letter, as Penn states, was 
inclosed another, in the Norse language, addressed to 
the Swedes of trie new province by Liembergh, the 
ambassador of Sweden in London. Markham is to 
give this to the Swedish pastor and bid him read it to 
his countrymen. 

Before Crispin's death was known to Penn he had 
appointed William Heage as additional commissioner. 
There does not appear on the record evidence of any 
great amount of work done by them, though they 
I probably afforded assistance to both Markham and 
j Holme in executing, as well as they could, the in- 
j structions of Penn. Being on the spot it was soon 
discovered that these instructions would require to be 
sensibly modified. For example, in selecting the site 
for the city and locating it in the fork of the Schuyl- 
kill and Delaware, which was done early in the spring 
of 1682, 1 it was found that scarcely more than an 
eighth of the acres called for could be laid off. 

Markham was in New York on June 21, 1681, where 
he procured the proclamation already spoken of from 
Governor Brockholls. The first record we have of his 
appearance on the Delaware is the following "Obli- 
gation of Councilmen :" " Whereas, wee whose hands 
and Seals are hereunto Sett are Chosen by Wm. Mark- 
ham (agent to Wm. Penn, Esq., Proprietor of y e 
Province of Pennsylvania) to be of the Councill for 
y e s d province, doe hereby bind ourselves by our hands 
& Seals, that wee will neither act nor advise, nor Con- 
sent unto anything that shall not be according to our 
own Consciences the best for y e true and well Govern- 
ment of the s d Province, and Likewise to Keep Secret 
all y e votes and acts of us, The s d Councell, unless 
Such as by the General Consent of us are to be pub- 
lished. Dated at Vpland y e third day of August, 
1681. 

" Robert Wade, Morgan Drewet, W m Woodmanse, 
(W. W. The mark of) William Warner, Thomas 
Ffairman, James Sandlenes, Will Clayton, Otto Er- 
nest Koch, and y e mark (L) of Lacy (or Lasse) 
Cock." Wade, Drewet, Woodmanson, Fairman, 
Sandeland, Clayton, and the two Cocks were old 
residents upon the Delaware; Fairman, Clayton, and 
both the Cocks owning land within the present limits 
of Philadelphia. Fairman appears to have had one 
of the best or most convenient houses on the site of 
the nascent city at and before the time of Penn's 
arrival. There is on file a bill and receipt for £426 
10s. 6<£, which he rendered Penn for services in sur- 
veying, doing errands, furnishing horses, hands, etc., 
between 1681 and later years. He boarded and lodged 

1 Claypoole writes, in England, July 24, 1682, " I have taken up reso- 
lutions to go next spring with my whole family to Pennsylvania, so 
have not sent my orders for a house for planting, hut intend to do it 
when I do come. I have one hundred acres where our capital city is to be, 
upon the river near Schuylkill and Peter Cock. There I intend to plant 
and huild my firBt house." This land of Peter Cock's appears to have 
adjoined the Swenson estate, and Penn gave him twice as many acreB foe 
it on the west side of the Schuylkill. 



Facsimile, of the Oath and signatures of the members of Deputy GavomDT Maikham's Council -1681 . 




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FOUNDING THE GREAT CITY. 



95 



Markham, Haige, and Holme and family at different 
times, and gave up his house to Penn the winter after 
the Governor's arrival. It appears also by this bill 
that Markham, aided by Fairman, made the survey 
of the river-front which determined the site of Phila- 
delphia. They were seven weeks " taking the courses 
and soundings of the Delaware," and Fairman's 
charge for his services was £10. For "taking the 
courses of the Schuylkill, etc., for sounding and 
placing Philadelphia on Delaware River, etc.," his 
charge was £6.' 

In September Upland Court appears to have been 
reorganized under Markham's instructions and jury 
trials instituted. The justices present at the meet- 
ing of this newly organized court were William 
Clayton, William Warner, Robert Wade, William 
Byles, Otto Ernest Cock, Robert Lucas, Lasse 
Cock, Swen Swenson, and Andreas Bankson, five 
of them being members of Markham's Council. 
The clerk of the court was Thomas Revell, and the 
sheriffs name was John Test. The first jury drawn 
in this court — the first drawn in Pennsylvania — was 
in a case of assault and battery (Peter Earicksen vs. 
Harman Johnson and wife), and their names were 
Morgan Drewet, William Woodmanson, William 
Hewes, James Browne, Henry Reynolds, Robert 
Schooley, Richard Pittman, Lasse Dalboe, John 
Akraman, Peter Rambo, Jr., Henry Hastings, and 
William Oxley ; two more of the Deputy Governor's 
Council being on this jury. At the next meeting of 
Upland Court, in November, Markham was present, 
and he attended all the subsequent sessions up to the 
time of Penn's arrival. 

A petition to Markham, dated from " Pesienk 
(Passyunk), in Pennsylvania, 8th October, 1681," 
would tend to show that the Indians of that day 
could not see the merits of " Local Option." It is 
signed by Nanne Seka, Keka Kappan, Jong Goras, 
and Espon Ape, and shows that " Whereas, the sell- 



1 Robert Wade was the first Quaker in Upland ; he came over with 
Fenwick in 1675. His house, called "Essex House," was a Quaker 
stopping-place; William Edmundston preached there in 1675, and this 
was the first house at which Penn lodged on landing in 1682. Sande- 
land was a Scotchman, came with Governor Carr, and settled in Upland 
in 1669. He married a daughter of Joran Kyn, the Swede who founded 
Upland, and the Teates family are among his descendants. Thomas 
Fairman, the survoyor (he appears to have been officially bo in 1696), 
was a forehanded Quaker, who came in probably from New Jersey in 
1 679. He married Elizabeth Kinsey, daughter and heir of John Kinsey, 
of Herefordshire, England, and by her got three hundred acres of 
ground, with house and outbuildings, at Shackamaxon. This land she 
had bought from Lasse Cock, Nov. 12, 1678. It was his share of a 
" town" of eighteen hundred acres only a Bhort time previously laid off 
at that point. Fairman's bouse was the Quaker meeting-house and 
Penu's residence. Lasse Cock's building it may have been the cause 
of the Indians frequenting the spot. Fairman took up two hundred 
and sixty acres on March 12, 1679, at Bensalem, Neshaminy Creek, and 
June 8, 1680, he got a grant for two hundred acres more. John Kinsey, 
Elizabeth Faii-man's father, was one of the commissioners sent over in 
1677 by the Quaker Company of Yorkshire to settle Indian claims in 
West Jersey. They came in the ship " Kont," and houghtall the land ou 
the east side of the Delaware from Oldman's Creek to Assanpink Creek. 
This purchase was the beginning of Burlington. 



ing of strong liquors [to Indians] was prohibited in 
Pennsylvania, and not at New Castle ; we find it a 
greater ill-convenience than before, our Indians go- 
ing down to New Castle, and there buying rum and 
making them more debauched than before (in 
spite of the prohibition). Therefore we, whose 
names are hereunder written, do desire that the 
prohibition may be taken off, and rum and strong 
liquors may be sold (in the foresaid province) as 
formerly, until it is prohibited in New Castle, and in 
that government of Delaware." This petition ap- 
pears to have been renewed after Penn's arrival, for 
we find in the minutes of the Provincial Council, un- 
der date of 10th of Third month (May 20, 1683), that 
"The Gov'r [Penn] Informs the Councill that he 
had Called the Indians together, and proposed to 
Let them have rum if they would be contented to be 
punished as y e English were ; which they agreed to, 
provided that y e Law of not Selling them Rum be 
abolished." The law was in fact declared to be a 
dead letter, but in 1684 Penn besought the Council to 
legislate anew on the subject so at least as to arrest 
indiscriminate sales of spirits to the savages. This 
subject of selling rum to the Indians is continually 
coming up in the Colonial Records. 

On the 15th of July, 1682, as one result of his 
careful surveys of the Delaware, Deputy Governor 
Markham bought of certain Indian sachems, or 
" sachamakers" (named Idquahon, Icanottowe, Idquo- 
quequon, Sahoppe, for himself and Ockmickon, Mer- 
kehowan, Oreckton, for Nannacassey, Shaurwaughton, 
Swanpisse, Nahoosey, Tomackhickon, Weskekitt, and 
Towharis), on Penn's account, a large tract of coun- 
try on the Delaware above Philadelphia, including 
the major part of what is now Bucks County (a 
name given by Penn himself in recollection of his 
long family connection with Buckinghamshire in 
England), and including also the site of the manors 
of Pennsbury and Highlands. It seems likely Penn 
himself knew something about the qualities of this 
tract, and had directed Markham's attention to it as 
well as to Burlington Island. The Quakers of the 
West New Jersey settlement were well acquainted 
with it, George Fox had ridden through it in 1672 
on his way to Maryland, and the preliminary paths 
of the high-road from New York to the Delaware 
i passed through it, crossing the Delaware either at 
Bristol or at Trenton. Pennsbury was beautifully 
located in the bend of the river at the falls, where 
the Delaware makes an elbow at right angles. This 
whole tract now bought by Markham — the consider- 
ation to the Indians being the usual assortment of 
match-coats, blankets, arms, trinkets, wampum, rum, 
and in this case with a little money added — had al- 
ready a history of its own. The Walloon families 
sent by the Dutch to the South River are supposed 
to have dwelt during their brief stay in that section 
on Verhulsten Island, just below the falls. Hudde, 
the Dutch commissary on the Delaware, erected the 



96 



HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA. 



We.st India Company's coat of arms on the tract in 
1646, and both Campanius and Adrian Van der Donck, 
in their books about the South River country, have 
spoken of this section. 1 

In 1654, Lindstrom, the Swedish engineer, who came 
over with Risingh, mapped this part of the Delaware 
and adjacent lands, beginning at the falls, which he 
designated as LaCataract d' Asinpink. WelcomeCreek, 
on which Penn built his manor-house, was called by 
Lindstrom La Rivifire de Sipaessingz-Kjil, and Bur- 
lington Island, opposite Bristol, is styled Mechansio. 
Peter Alrichs, who held many offices under both 
Dutch and English on the Delaware from his arrival 
at Henlopen in 1659 until the accession of Penn, had 
titles to Burlington Island and part of the mainland 
near Bristol under grants from the West India Com- 
pany and from Governor Nichols in 1667. In 1682 
he sold to Samuel Borden, and in 1688 to Samuel Car- 
penter. Alrichs' Island was occupied in 1679 by a 
Dutchman named Barentz. In 1675, Governor Andros 
bought of four Indian chiefs, — Mamarckickam, An- 
rickton, Sackoquewano, and Nanneckos, — some of the 
same party apparently who sold to Markham, a tract 
on the river from the present Bristol to Taylorsville, 
embracing fine lands in three townships, and includ- 
ing what was afterwards Penn's Manor. This purchase 
was made for the Duke of York, but Mr. Davis, the 
historian of Bucks County, thinks the purchase was 
never consummated, or at least the land never occu- 
pied. The Swedes petitioned Andros in November, 
1677, for leave "to settle together in a town on the 
west side of the river near the falls," in this same 
tract. 2 It seems quite probable, in view of all the 
circumstances, that there is foundation for the legend 
that the commissioners, with Markham and Holme, 
had looked curiously at Pennsbury, with a view to 
locating the great city there. The difficulty with 
regard to Upland was that so many Swedish titles 
would have to be extinguished, and, besides, the 
division line between Maryland and Pennsylvania 



1 Davis' History of Bucks County, Pa., p. 21, el seq. 

2 The names of these petitioners were Lawrence (or Lasse, Lacy) Cock, 
Israel Helm, Moens Cock, AndreaB Beucksou, Ephraim Herman, Caspar 
Herman, S wen Loon, John Dalbo, Jasper Fisk,Hans Moouson, Frederick 
Roomy, Erick Muelk, Gunner Rambo, Thomas Harwood, Eric Cock, 
Peter Jockum, Peter Cock, Jr., Jan Stille, Jonas Nielson, Oele Swenson, 
James Sanderling, Matthias Matthias, J. Devos, and William Oriam. 
Ephraim and Caspar Herman were both sons of Augustin Herman, a. 
Bohemian adventurer of great accomplishments, a soldier, scholar, sur- 
veyor, Bailor, and diplomatist, who, after serving in Stuyvesant's Council 
in New Amsterdam, and conducting an embassy from him to Lord Bal- 
timore, incurred the haughty director's displeasure and was cast into 
prison. He escaped, went into Maryland, surveyed and made a map of 
the Chesapeake Bay and the province, and was paid with the gift of a 
territory in Kent and Cecil Counties, which he called Bohemia Manor. 
It was intersected by a river of the same name. A part of this tract 
■nob Bold by Herman to a congregation of Labadists, who settl ed upon it, 
Ephraim Herman, who was born in 1654, lived chiefly among the Swedes 
in New Amsteland Upland. He was clerk of the court here in 1676. 
In 1679 he married Elizabeth von Rodenburg, a daughter of the Gov- 
ernor of Curacoa, and took her to Uplands, where he shortly afterwards 
deserted her to join the Labadists. He returned to her, however, after 
a while, and was in Upland on the day of Penn's arrival. 



was still unsettled. Pennsbury was rejected after 
survey, probably because the depth of water was 
insufficient. At Coquannock, on the contrary, every 
condition required by Penn was fulfilled, except that 
the neck of the peninsula first occupied was too nar- 
row to permit a town site of ten thousand acres to be 
laid out upon it, and the original city, as mapped 
by Thomas Holme, only contained between twelve 
hundred and thirteen hundred acres. 

When the site was determined, Holme and his as- 
sistants went to work with the greatest industry to 
lay the ground off into lots, as well as to survey the 
farm and manor tracts which had already been sold. 
There was need to do this promptly, for now a stream 
of immigration began to pour in upon the city and 
the adjacent towns and plantations. It started before 
Penn had sailed from Deal, and it continued through 
the year, twenty-three ships, one every sixteen days, 
having arrived in the Delaware in 1682. Over one 
thousand immigrants came over that year, and Penn 
wrote to Lord North, in September, 1683, that "since 
last summer we have had about sixty sail of great and 
small shipping, which is a good beginning." At the 
end of this same year he said, in a letter to the Mar- 
quis of Halifax, " I must, without vanity, say that I 
have led the greatest colony into America that ever 
any man did upon private credit, and the most pros- 
perous beginnings that ever were in it are to be found 
among us." 

All these new settlers wanted their lands laid off, 
so that they might begin to build upon them; many 
were living in tents, or in caves cut in the high banks 
of the Delaware and the Schuylkill. Holme and the 
commissioners accordingly laid off the town and be- 
gan to apportion the lots with as much dispatch as 
possible. One of the earliest surveys on record is as 
follows : " No. 142, David Hammon ; return for a lot. 
Warrant, 1681, 5 th mo. 5 th .* I have caused to be sur- 
veyed and set out unto David Hamon, in right of 
Amos Nythols, purchaser of 250 acres, his City Lot, 
between the 5 th and 6 th sts. from Delaware, and on 
the south side of the lot called as yet Pool street [after- 
wards Walnut Street], in the city of Philadelphia, 
containing in length 220 foot, bounded on the west 
with Robert Hart's lot, on the east with John Kirk's 
lot, on the north with y e said Pool Street, and on the 
south with vacant lots ; and containing a breadth of 
50 foot, and was surveyed on the 6 th instant, and 
accordingly entered and recorded in my office and 
hereby returned into the Governor's Secretary's office, 
Philadelphia, this 10" 1 of y e 5 th month, 1682. 

"Thomas Holme, Surveyor- General." 

This is proof that the city was named, surveyed, 
platted, and lots had begun to be occupied by settlers 
in July, 1682. Exactly how, or when, or why Penn 
named the city Philadelphia does not now seem easy 

3 "1681," if meant for the year, is an error. The plat of the oity had 
not been marked out as early as the 5th of July, 1681. "1682, 5 th mo. 
6 th " must have been meant. 



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The following list of first purchasers of lots is copied from the printed letter and account published by 
of the misspelling of many names which are known to be wrong. In this list, wherever possible, the 
the appendix of the city digest of 1854. 



order of the Committee of the Free Society of Traders, in London, 1683. That list is imp 
ancient spelling and errors have been corrected and the names spelled properly. The 1: 



DELAWARE FRONT LOTS. 
* * 

The purchasers of 1000 
acres and upwards are 
placed in the Front and 
High Streets, and begin 
on Delaware front at the 
South end with No. I, and 
proceed to the North end 
with No. 43. 

No. 

William Peun, Jn' 1 

W m . Lowther 2 

Lawrence Growden.... 3 

Philip Ford 4 

The Society . 5 

Nich. More, Press**.....' G 

John Marsh 7 

James Harrison 8 

Thomas Farm borrow*. 9 

JamesBoyden 10 

N.N . '.. 10 

Francis Borrough...^.. 11 

Robert Knight 11 

John Reynolds 11* 

Nathaniel Bromley.... 12 

Euoch Flower .;.. 12 

John Moore L, 12 

Humphrey South 13, 

Sabian Cule 13 

Thomas Baker 13 

James Claypole 14 

N. N 15 

Alexander Parker 15 

Robert Green way 15 

Samuel Carpenter 16 

Charles Taylor 17 

W*. Shardlow 18 

John Love 19 

Nathaniel Allen 19 

Edward Jeffersoq 19 

John Sweet-apple'. 19 

Thomas Bond ... 19 

Richard Croslett 19 

Robert Taylor 20 , 

Thomas Rowline 20 r 

Thomas He hist (prob- * 

ably Herriot) 21 

Charles Pickering 22 

Thomas Bearne, or 

Bonnie 22 

John Willard 22 

Edward Blardham 23 

Richard Webb 23 

John Bay, or Boy...... 23 

Daniel Smith 23 

Letitia Penn 24 

W m . Bowman 25 

Griffith Jones 26 

Thomas Callowh ill 27 



.••••• 



;.... 28 

\V m . Stanley * 29 

Joseph Fisher ; 30 

Robert Turner. ,..". 31 

John Holme (probably 

Thomas) 32 

Clonjent Willward 33 

Richard Davis 33 

Abraham Parke.. .1 34 

W m . Smith 34 

John Blakelin 35 

Kllou (probably Allen) 

Foster 35 

W™. Wade 36 

Benjamin Chambers... 30 

Samuel Fox 36 

Francis Borrough 36 

John Barber 37 

George Palmer 37 

John Sharpless 37 

Henry Maddock 38 

Thomas Rowland 38 



No. 

John Bezer 38 

Richard Crosby 38, 

Josiah Ellis... 39 

Thomas Woodbridge., 39 

John Alsop 39 

John Day * 39 

Francis Pluinsted 40 

W m . Taylor \W.. 

Thomas Barklay (Bar- _ 

clay) * r 41- 

John Sim cock .. 42 

W m .Criscrin (Crispin) 43 

The High St. lots begin 
at No. 44, aud so proceed 
ou both sides of High St. 
to the Center Square. 

No. 

N. N v . -14 

N. N.. 45 

Thomas Bond 46 

John Sweetapple........ 

John Love 

Margaret Marti ndale.. 

James Claypole 47 

John Barber I... 48 

W». Wade 

Thomas Bowrnay 

(probably Benrne, or 
Bourne. See No. 22.) 

Griffith Jones 49 

Johu Day 60 

Francis IMumsted 

Abraham Paake 

James Harrison .... 51 

Josiah Ellis 62 

Samuel Jobson 

Samuel Lawson... ...... 

John Moore 

John Sharpless 

Christopher Taylor.... 63 

George Palmer 64 

Clement Willward 65 

Samuel Carpenter...... 56 

Thomas Herriot 57 

Nathaniel Allen 

Thomas Wool ridge..... 

Alexander Parker 58 

John Sincock.. .......... 59' 

John Beazer ( Bezer.).. GO 

John Reynolds 

Daniel Smith 

Francis Borrough...... 

Richard Davis 61.-. 

Enoch Flower. 62 — 

Nathaniel Bromley.... 

James Bowden 

MoseB Caress 63 

W m . Bowman I;... 64 

Robert Turner 65 

Thomas Holme 66 

..... 07 

Wm. Stanley 68 

Wm. Shardlow 69 

Thomas Fran borough 

(Farmborough) 70 

Edward Blardman 71 

Richard Webb 

Edward Jefferson 

Henry Matlock (prob- 
ably Maddock) 

Robert Knight 

Thomas Rowland 

John Bay, or Boy 73 

Humphrey Smith 

John Blakelin 

Richard Crosby 

Thomas Barker 

W m . Crispin 74 

Thomas Callowhill 75 

Richard Croslet 76 



No. 

John Alsop 

Subriau Cole 

Charles Pickering 

Wto Smith..... It 

John Willard 

Thomas Brassley (per- 

IlllObl... •■*...... .■••«••.« i o 

Thomas Harley (per- 
haps) 79 

Richard Thomas 80 

Benjamin Fnrley(Fur- 
lo) '. 81 

John Siuicock 82 

DELAWARE BACK LOTS. 

Here follow the Lots ■ 
of the Purchasers under 
1000 acres & placed in the 
back streets of the Front 
of Delaware & begins with 
the N 5 at the South Side 
and so proceed numbered 
as in the. Draught. 

No. 

TW. Powell.: 6 

George Simcock 6 

Barth . Coppock (Cop- 
puck) 7 

W m . Yardley.. 8 

9 

W». Frampton. ....**... 10 
Francis Dowe (prob- 
ably Dove) 12 

— 13 

r H 

Jolin Parsons 15 

John Goodson 16 

John Moore 17 

And r . Grlscom 18 

John Fisher 19 

Isaac Martin 20 

W". Carter 21 

John South worth 22 

Ricli d . Ingliou (prob- 
ably Inglia) 23 

John Barns 24 

Philip Lehman 25 

Philip Tlieo. Lehman. 26 

Richard Noble 27 

28 

29 

John Hitchcock 30 

31 
32 
33 

36 

37 
38 
39 
40 
41 
42 
43 
44 
45 
46 
47 
48 
49 
50 
51 
52 

53 
54 
55 
56 



...*.«..«• 



i. • . . 



N. N 

W">. Gibson 

Richard Lodge 

John Bnnurd (Bar- 

I I ll 1 Uli • ••■•»«•• a. ...... I 

James Park 

Leonard Fell 



Thomas Harding... 

John Kinsman 

Israol Hobbs 

Edw d . Land way.... 

W™. Wi>gan 

Rich*. Worrell 



Tho». Zachary... 
John Chambers. 



Randle Vernon 

Rob*. Vernou 

Tho«. Minshall 

W m . Moore >.. 

Johu Stringfellow:... 
Tho 8 . Scott... .... 



Henry Ward 

Thomas Vurgo (VI r- 

goe )....; 

Tho'.Buth\re11 

James Batchlo (per- 
haps) 

Tho\ Callowhill. J.L. 
Tho 8 . Pagel (Paget)... 

James Peter ... 

John Dickson 

Tho 8 . Pnschall.,.. 



■ ....•••«• 



Priscilla Sheppard.... 

Walter Marti u 

Sarah Fox 

Eliz. Simmons 

W m . Man 

Israel Barnel 

Edw d . Erbery 

Roger Drew .... 

John Jennet '...• 

Mary Wood worth 

John Russel 

Tho 8 . Barry 

George Randall 

Tho". Harris 

W m . Harnier 

Tho 8 . Rouse 

Nehemiah Mitchell.. 



David Briut... ..... 



Sarah Wool man 

John Tibby 

• "lui". 1j60 

J. I) .(probably Jona- 
than Dickinson)... 

w«n.East; ..... 

Tho", Cross 



Arch Mitchell....:.... 

Israel Self .'.... 

Edwd. Luff. 

John Clark 

John Brothers../.!.... 

liMw d . Benztir 

-Anth Elton .'. 

John Gibson 

Dau>. Smith ;..., 



No. 
57 
5S 
59 
GO 
61 
62 
G3 
64 

65 

00 

G7 
08 

69 

70 

71 

72 

73 

74 

75 

7G 

77 

78 

79 

80 

SI 

82 

83 

84 

S5. 

80 

S7 

S8 

89 

00 

91 

92 

93 

94 

95 

90 

97 
98 
99 
100 
101 
102 
103 
1(4 
105 
106 
107 
108 
109 



BACK STREETS OF TUB 
FRONT OF DELAWARE. 



Edw fl . Brown 

John Fish 

Rob'. Holgate 

John Pusey 

Caleb Pusey 

Sam'. Noyes 

Tbo 8 . Sugar (Suger).. 

W™, Withers 

John Collet 

W«». Coats 

IT u m ph rey M u rroy ... 

Eli/,. Shorter 

Joseph Knight 

John Guest 



John Songhurst 

John Baang (prob 

ably Burns) 

Sarah Fuller 



Tho". Vernon 



Will Isaac 

Edwd. Jeffries 

Ann Crowley 

Bob 1 . Sominor (Sum- 
ner) 



No. 

110 

111 

112 

113 

114 

116 

116 

117 

118 

119 

120 

121 

122 

122 

123 

124 

1'25 

12G 

127 



George Gerrish 

Wm. Chiwos (Cloud).. 

W m . Bailey'..'. 

James Hill: 

Tho». Hatt 

Wm. Hitchcock 

W ,n . Bryant 

William Downton.... 

John Buckley 

W m . Ashby 

Edw d . Tonikins 

Henry Paxston 

Edwd. Crew 

John Martin 

Henry Ceeiy 

John Geery 

Rob 1 . Jones'.-... 

John Kerton 

Tho 8 . Sandres (Saun- 
ders)..... 

Army Child. 

Rich*. Woolor 

Gilbert Mace 

| 

Tho 8 . Jones 

Tho 8 . Lyvesly 

John Austin 

Robert Hodgkin 

W">. Tanner 

Dan*. Jones!. 

Jos. Tanilpj" 

RichardJDowusend... 

Sam 1 . Miles 

Jos. Buckley 

Sam 1 . Quaro 

David Kiusey 

Ed\v d . Blake... 

David Jones 

Henry SleiglitOflV..... 

Tho s . Junes... 

John Hicks 



Tho 8 . Barberry 

John Gleane (Glenn). 

, .Amos Nicholas 

Itichd. Jordon 

Sam 1 . Burnet 

Tho". Cobb: 

John Barber:....'...:... 

John Botyor 

George Andrews 

•llobV Stephens 

W m . Beu/.er 

Tho". Huyward 

Oliver Cope; •..-.. 

John BunscC... 

Gilbert Mace 

John Ncilii 

Nath>. Pasko 

Barth . Coppock 

\V">. Neak 

Joseph Milner 

William Bailey 

Peter Leicester *.. 

Henry Hemming 

John Evans 

Handel Malin 

Allen Bobinet 



No. 

128 

129 

130 

131 

132 

133 

134 

135 

13G 

137 

138 

139 

140 

141 

142 

143 

144 

145 

140 

147 

148 

149' 

150 

151 

152 

153 

154 

155 

150 

157 

158 

159 

100 

101 

102 

1 03 

104 

105 

100 

107 

108 

109 

170 

171 

172 

173 

174 

175 

170 

177 
178 
179 
180 
181 
182 
183 
184 
185 
186 
187 
188 
1*89 
190 
191 
192 
193 



Hitherto the Lots of 
Delaware Front to the 
Centre of the City. 

SCHUYLKILL FRONT. 

Here follmvoth the Lots 
of Skuylkill Front to the 
Centre of the City, tho 
P n rchasers from 1 000 
neves and upwards .are 
placed in the Front and 
High Streets, aud begins 
on Skuylkill Front at the 



South end with N 1, and 
so proceeds with the 
Front to the northward 
to'N43. 

• No/ 

W». Penn, Jn r 1, 

W» Lowther 2 

Lawrence Growden.... 3 

Philip Ford 4 

The Society 6 

Nich. Moore, Presd 1 ... 6 - 

John Marsh...; 7 

Tho 9 . Itudyard 8 

Andrew Jowlo (Sowle) 

Herbert Springet 9 

George White 

Henry Child 

Cha». Bahurst (Bath- ' ; 

hurst) 10 

W"\ Kent f ; 

Johu Tovey.... i 

W m . Phillips i . 

Rob*. Dinsdal (Dinis- 

dal) 11 

\V». Bacou 12 

James Wallis 13 

Philip Lehnman ; 

Margaret Marti ndale. 

Nich. Wain 

Cha". Marshall U 

George Green. 15 

Wm. Jenkins.-.*./. r 

John Bevan ; • 

Richard Pritchard 16 

W r «. Pardo (Pardoo)... . 

W ,u . Powell 

Cha". Loyd 17 

John Hart. IS 

Joshua Hastings 

Edw d . Beatrice (Pet- , 

tris) , * 

Tho. Minchin (Min- 
shall) ; 

John ap John 19 

\V m . Smith , , 

Riclid. Collins 

Rich d . Snead 20 

Dugal Gam el* (Dan 1 . 

* l ill 11 * 1 I •..*«•.•••*■••.• a • 

W m . Kussell '• 

John Cede.. 

Ulch*. Ciunton 21 

Ba/.elion Foster • 

John Mar^h. ...;... 

Rich' 1 , nans T 

James Hunt ... 

John Blunstdn 22 

Henry Bailey 

John, Williams, Ed\v d M 
and Mary Pening- 

ton 1 23 

Vacant 24 

Fro. Rogers 25 

Ram 1 . Chiridge.... 26 

James Craven 27 

Rich d . Pierce 

Tho 8 .. Phillips 

Sam 1 . Tuvernor... 

Tho. Poarce 

Solomon Richards 28 

Arthur Perryu 

John Napper 

Beuj. Eiist 

John West 29 

* • * *- ......... *...*■••..•••..•• • '\' 

Francis Fincher... 31 

Tho*. Roberts 

Rob 1 . Turner 

John Gee 

Jacob & Joseph Ful- 
ler ,...., 32 



No. 

George Shore 33 

Edw«»". Hubbard 34 

John Thomas 35 

Hugh Lamb 30' * 

Sarah Fuller <> 

Sam 1 . Allen 

Edw d .Bennet. 37 

W«. Lloyd 

Rich*'. Fletcher....' 

John Mason 

Tho». Elwood 38 ^ 

John King 

Henry Pawling 

George Powell..... 

Rich' 1 . Baker 

John CI awes (Clause). 39 

John Brock"..' ,\ f ., . 

James Di I worth....' 

Edw<*. Welsh [ 

H. Killingbeck (KiU 

lingburt) 

Rich* 1 . Vickris 40 

Cha*. Harford ..*... 

W». Brown...; 

W». Beaks 

Cha". Jonns, Sen... 41 

Thov Crosedell....^ 

Walter King ' 

John Jones 

Francis Smith '. 42 

Rich 41 . Penn 43 - 

Sam 1 . Rouies 

Isaac Gellings...., 

John Masou 

W". Markham.... 

Edmund Warner 



SCHUYLKILL HIGH STREET 
LOTS. 

The High Slreet L«»ts. 
begins at 41, and so pro- 
ceeds nn both sides of 
that Street to the Centre 
Square. [Mnn —This 

goes from Schuylkill east- 
ward.] 

No. 

44 1 

Beuj*. East 45 2 

John West 40 3 

Will. Phillips '. 

Will Smith ' 

lTio 1 Minchin.. 47 4 

John Bevan 

Sum 1 . Allen 

John Thomas 4S 6 

Andrew Sowle 49 6 

James Dill worth... 

John Jones 

John King 

John Meason (Ma- 
son) 

Sam 1 . Chiridge 50 7 

John Gee „ 51 8 

Jacob & Joseph 

Fuller 51 8 

W*. Markham 52 9 

John Blumstone... 53 10 

George Wood 

Edwd. Prichard 

John Brock 54 11 

Itobt Tannor . 

John Ambry - - - 

Nich. Wain 

Henry Killingbeck. 

Sam>. Kowles 55 12 

Solomon Richard... 56 13 

Arthur Perrin 

John Nanper 



No. 

John DennisoD 

John. Edw d ., VV<n. f 
& Mary Pening- 
ton 57 14 

Rich^. Penn 58 15 

Sam 1 . Fox...'. 59 16 . 

Johu Cole 

Will Russell ; 

Henry Bayly 

Lewis David 60 1.7 

Josh. Hastings 

Philip Lehnman... 

John Mason 61 18 

Tho 8 . Elwood 

James Wallis.. p 

Bazelion Foster 

Chu\ Marshall..^... 6 2 19* 

Wm. Lloyd.'. 63 20 

Tho B . Crosedale.... 

Geo. Pownell 

Wm. Beaks 

Cha 8 . Jon os. 64 22 

Ilertry Child . 

Geo. Green ; ' 

Cha*. Lloyd..;....... 65 23 

(Edwd. Shubbard 

(Shewbart) ♦ 66 24 

Geo. Shore.'. 07 25 

Rich*. Vickris 08 26 

Sam 1 . Barker 

John Hart. ;... 

James Hunt 

Richd. Collins 69 27 

John Rowland 

John Tovey ' 

W». Pardo; ,' 

Rob*. Dimsdal 70 28 

John itp.John....... 71 29 

H'Tbert Springet.. 

W m . Brown 

Francis Smith 72 30 

John Marsh 73 31 

Cha\ Harford 

John Clowes 

E<lwd. West 

Edm ,T . Ben net, ^... 

Will Kont.. t , 74.. 

E»lw J . Beatrice -„ • 

Cha 9 . Bethwist \ t 

W'«. Powell 

John North 75 32 

Rich' 1 . Haines « • 

lli-nry Pawling..... ; 
John Sblre^..".... f .V." 
Kicbard Thatcher.. 

Hugh Lamb 7G 33 

Geo. White 77 

Isaac Gcllis 

W m . Bauer 78 35 

Tho". Rudyard 79 36 

Tho 9 . Roberts 

Rich*. Baker 80 37 

Will. Jenkins 

Rich* 3 . Gunton - 

Edwd. Martindale.. 

William -King 81 38 

Dugall Gamel 

(Dan 1 . Gamel).... 

Allen Foster 

Francis Fincher.... 

Edm d . Warner 

James Craven 

Rich*. Pearco 

Tho". Phillips 82 

Sam. Tavernor 

Tho 9 . Poarce.. ..w... 

Rich*. Snead 83 40 

Francis Rogers 84 41 

Geo. Rogers 

84 42 



Rob 



Mat 
Jam 
Riil] 
Ralj 
Phil 
Sam 



Here follows the Pur- 
chasers under 1000 acres, The 
placed in the back of the Joe 
Front of Skuylkill and Ric 
begins at the Southern *T1k 
Side with N 1, and so pro- Fro 
ceeds by N os as in the Job 

Draught. ^ . The 

No. Jos. 

Shadrach Welsh 1 Ric 

John Nixon 2 Ric 

Peter Blaud 3 Tlei 

Henry Green 4 Hei 

Morris Lenhoirae 5 Fra 

John Bevan. ...i~. Rop 

John Clare .'.... 7 Job 

W«. Morden..„ 8 Mai 

John Foyer (Bqyer)l*. 9 Mai 

John Price 10 Josl 

Alox tt . Beardsley 11 Job 

Tho". Simmons 12 ' 

Francis Cowburn (Co- Tho 

burn) 13 Joh 

Tho". Dell (Dill) 14 Jos< 

Rich. Few 15 Pav 

John Swift.. 16 Tho 

W«. Lawrence..... 17 Edv 

Henry Coombe 18 

Ann Cliff , 19 

Vur 9() 

John Huynea 21 

Kob*. Adams.. 22 

John Hnghea?.. ......../ 23 

Sarah Ceres. ...J; 24 

Richd Noble 25 

John Longwortby 20 

James Clayton....' 27 

Ilenry Lewis.. .l M 28 

Lewis David -.. ..... 29 

\V m . Howell...."..".......; 30 

John Bargo 31 

Keese Rod rah .'.' 32- 

Will Cardly..... 33 

Will Bu-stick. 34 

Jos. Hall 35 | 

James Lancaster I5G 

Tho". Biigg 37 

Petor Worj-al 38 

Sum 1 . Buckley.. 39 

Cntliboit Hyhnrst 40 

John Burchel 41 , 

Tho 8 . Morris 42 

Dadiel Middecot (Hid- 

dlescott) 43 ,-' 

John Jon^s...... .,,. 44 

Roger Beck : 45 . ' 

Itichd. Hunt 46 

Rob 1 . Sanderlande 47 

Ged. Keith 48 

JohnSnoshold 49 ' 

W» Bingley 60 ,J 

Tho". Parsons 51 < : Betl 

Peter Dalho 52 Ricl 

W». East 53 Hen 

W». Clark 54 Dem 

Geo. Strode (Stroud)... 55 Phil 

John Summers 56 

Jos. Richards 67 J. D. 

John Bristow 58 Will 

Peter Young 59 Join 

Geo. Powell CO Robi 

John Sausoui 61 Knn 

John Pearson (prob- Edw 

ably Parsons) 62 Rob 1 

Christ. Tophold 63 Phil 

James Hill ; 64 Hen 

W'". Sal way 65 Tlio« 

Francis Hurford 66 Rich 

John Walne 67 Rich 

Will Cecil 68 Johr 

John Spencer 69 Mar 

Arthur Bewus 70 Tho 1 



Edw 
Tho 
Jos. 
Slmi 
E.lw 
li( 
Johi 
Jam 
Job) 

Join 

Eliz 

Join 

ha 



FOUNDING THE GREAT CITY. 



97 



to ascertain. Of course he selected the name him- 
self; and, as we know from one of his letters, did so 
before the site was chosen, and he had in full view 
its meaning of brotherly love. Doubtless, likewise, 
Penn had in view that one of the " seven churches 
of Asia" to which the angel in Revelation was com- 
manded to write. 1 

On the 19th of September, 1682, Holme and the 
commissioners had a drawing of lots in Philadelphia 
in compliance with the instructions given by the Pro- 
prietary Governor. The lots drawn were on Second, 
Broad, and Fourth Streets, but as these drawings were 
never ratified, and as a great many radical changes 
were made in Penn's land distribution system after 
he came into the province, it is needless to dwell 
more at length upon the subject in this place. 2 

Penn's ship, the "Welcome," sailed from "the 
Downs" (the roadstead off Deal and Ramsgate, where 
the Goodwin Sands furnish a natural breakwater) on 
or about Aug. 31, 1682. Claypoole writes on Sep- 
tember 3d that " we hope the ' Welcome,' with Wil- 
liam Penn, is gotten clear." The ship made a toler- 
ably brisk voyage, reaching the capes of the Delaware 
on October 24th, and New Castle on the 27th, being 
thus fifty-three days from shore to shore. The voy- 
age, however, was a sad one, almost to the point of dis- 
aster. The smallpox had been taken aboard at Deal, 
and so severe were its ravages that of the one hundred 
passengers the ship carried thirty, or nearly one-third, 
died during the passage. The terrible nature of this 
pestilence may be gathered from one striking fact, 
and that is this : antiquarians, searching for the 
names of these first adventurers who came over with 



1 Rev., chap. i. 2; iii. 7-11. There were two Philadelphias before 
Penn's city, — one, this city referred to, in Asia Minor, now called Ala- 
Shehr (" the exalted city"), which still has a considerable population, 
maintains a Greek Church archbishopric, and has numerous remains of 
nntiquity, including five Christian Churches ; and the Philadelphia in 
Syria, anciently called " Rabbak," and now "Amman" or "Ammon," 
site of the Ammonites. It lies on an affluent of the Jordan, fifty-five 
miles from Jerusalem, in the pashalik of Damascus Ala-Shehr is a 
sacred city even among the Turks, who carry their dead long distances 
in order to bury them there. 

But there may have been another reason for Penn's giving the name 
of Philadelphia to his new city. Jane Leadley was the founder of a 
religious 6ect in England during the seventeenth century which was 
very near in its observances to those of the Quakers. It was said to have 
originated from the society founded by Madame Bourignon. Jane Lead- 
lev's society made many proselytes in England and on the Continent of 
Europe, in Holland, Belgium, and Germany. Its members were closely 
allied to tile Quakers and the Mennonists. the Quakers sometimes 
preaching to the Leadleyites and vice versa. Both Fox and Penn were 
acquainted with Jane, who called her sect the " Philadelphian Society." 
Her secretary, Heinrich Johann Deichmann, was a German, and the 
friend and correspondent of John Kelpius, the " Hermit of the Wissa- 
hickon." The Continental agent of the Philadelphoi was Hermann von 
Saltzungen, and there was little to distinguish the amici of the Phila- 
delphia from the disciples of Pchwenkfeld, Menno, and Labadie; all 
claimed a common descent from Jacob Boehme, Johann Arnd, Johann 
Tauler, and Thomas ii Kempis. 

2 Much confusion is found in the names and dates and order of trans- 
actions at this period in respect to land apportionmen t. Records appear 
to have been revised without any account kept of the changes, and con- 
sequently authorities differ materially concerning what was done. See 
Lewis' Land Titles, G4-174, and John Blnir Linn, Puke of York's Laws. 

7 



Penn, — a list of names more worthy to be put on 
record than the rolls of Battell Abbey, which pre- 
serves the names of the subjugators of England, who 
came over with William the Conqueror, — have been 
able to find the most of them attached as witnesses or 
otherwise to the wills of the well-to-do burghers and 
sturdy yeomen who embarked with Penn on the 
" Welcome" and died during the voyage. During 
this period of trial and affliction, when the natural 
instincts of man are turned to terror and selfish se- 
clusion, Penn showed himself at his best. His whole 
time and that of his friends was given to the sup- 
port of the sick, the consolation of the dying, the 
burial of the dead. Richard Townshehd, a fellow- 
passenger, said, " His good conversation was very 
advantageous to all the company. His singular care 
was manifested in contributing to the necessities of 
many who were sick with the smallpox. . . . We had 
many good meetings on board." In these pious ser- 
vices Penn. had the cordial help of Robert Pearson, 
to whom, in return, he gratefully gave the privilege 
of rebaptizing the town on the Delaware at which 
some of the survivors landed, and thus the significant 
and appropriate name of Upland, applied by the 
Swedes to their second colony, was lost in the eupho- 
nious but meaningless and inappropriate cognomen 
of Chester. 

The record of Penn's arrival at New Castle is as fol- ' 
lows: "October 28. On the 27th day of October, ar- 
rived before the town of New Castle, in Delaware, 
from England, William Penn, Esq., proprietary of 
Pennsylvania, who produced two certain deeds of 
feoffment from the illustrious prince, James, Duke of 
York, Albany, etc., for this town of New Castle, and 
twelve miles about it, and also for the two lower 
counties, the Whorekill's and St. Jones's, which said 
deeds bear date the 24th August, 1682; and pursuant 
to the true intent, purpose, and meaning of his royal 
highness in the same deeds, he the said William 
Penn received possession of the town of New Castle, 
the 28th of October, 1682." 3 This delivery was made, 
as the records show, by John Moll, Esq., and Ephraim 
Herman, gentlemen, attorneys, constituted by his 
royal highness, of the town of Delaware, otherwise 
called New Castle; the witnesses to the formal cere- 
mony, in which the key of the fort was delivered to 
Penn by one of the commissioners, "in order that 
he might lock upon himself alone the door," and 
which was accompanied with presents of "turf and 
twig, and water and soyle of the river Delaware," 
were Thomas Holme, William Markham, Arnoldus 
de la Grange, George Forman, James Graham, Sam- 
uel Land, Richard Tugels, Joseph Curies, and John 
Smith. Penn at once commissioned magistrates for 
the newly-annexed counties, and made Markham his 
attorney to receive possession of the lower counties 
from Moll and Herman. He also summoned a court 



3 Hazard's Annals. 



98 



HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA. 



to meet at New Castle on November 2d. On that 
day Penn was present with the justices, and Mark- 
ham, Holme, Haige, Symcock, and Brassey, of the 
Provincial Council. The lower counties gave in 
their allegiance to Markham for Penn on November 
7th. In the interval between his arrival and the 
meeting of court, October 29th, Penn went to Upland 
to pay a short visit. There is no positive information 
that shows at what time Penn arrived in Philadel- 
phia. The record of the Society of friends says, " At 
a Monthly Meeting the 8th, 9th month, 1682 : At this 
time Governor William Penn and a multitude of 
Friends arrived here and erected a city called Phila- 
delphia, about half a mile from Shackamaxon, where 
meetings, etc., were established, etc. Thomas Fair- 
man, at the request of the Governor, removed himself 
and family to Tacony, where there was also a meeting 
appointed to be kept, and the ancient meeting of 
Shackamaxon removed to Philadelphia, from which, 
also, other meetings were appointed in the Province 
of Pennsylvania." This has been construed to say 
that Penn arrived at Philadelphia on the 8th. If 
that was correct, then he must have gone to Fairman's 
house on the same day, and the place of Friends' 
Meeting was changed on the same day. It is clear, 
from letters of Penn from Upland and other places, 
that he did not go to Fairman's house until February 
or March. 1683. 

Traditions, upon which imaginative writers have 
been eager to expatiate, speak of Penn coming to his 
new city from Upland or New Castle in a handsome 
barge, and describe how and where he landed. But 
we need not place as great confidence in tradition as 
John F. Watson seems to have done. This inde- 
fatigable antiquarian and most graphic and agreeable 
writer, — the very Boswell of old Philadelphia, its men 
and manners, — after tossing aside bundle after bundle 
and chest after chest full of precious early documents, 
the materia prima of history, with the characteristic 
comment that " they furnish but little in my way," 
rubs his hands with exquisite complacency and listens 
with the most perfect faith to the rambling and con- 
fused recitals of old men and old women, the older 
the better, to whom dates are as dreams of the night, 
and who make up in detail and obstinacy what they 
lack in precision and authenticity. " A handsome 
barge" on the Delaware would have been a strange 
craft. Why should not Penn come to Philadelphia on 
the " Welcome" with the other passengers, and land 
with them somewhere between Wicaco and Shacka- 
maxon, on the site of the city which had been laid 
off under his instructions ? 

Penn was at that time thirty-eight years old, still 
young, graceful, athletic, enthusiastic, still fond of 
boating and riding. Tradition even says (though we 
must be permitted to doubt this, in view of his concep- 
tion of the gravity of the Indian character, as laid 
down in his instructions to Crispin and his fellow- 
Commissioners, and in his later letter to the Company 



of Free Traders) that he competed with and eclipsed 
the young Indian braves in their jumping matches. 
But at least he bore no resemblance to the Penn painted 
by old Mr. Benjamin West in his wretched misrepre- 
sentation upon the so-called Shackamaxon treaty. 
Even the sedate Mr. Janney cannot help entering a 
protest against West's having depicted Penn as " a cor- 
pulent old man." He says nothing about the plain 
broadbrim hat and the snuff-colored, shad-bellied 
coat in which West has clothed Penn, both of them 
sixty years out of the way. West painted Penn's 
figure from his recollection of the figures and dress of 
the elders he used to see when a lad in the meeting- 
house at Springfield, just as, according to his pupil 
Dunlap's " History of the Arts of Design," he painted 
the hands in every portrait he made from his own or 
those of one of his students. Mr. J. F. Fisher, in his 
discourse before the Pennsylvania Historical Society 
on "the private life and domestic habits of William 
Penn," says that West has misconceived Penn's dress 
as unpardonably as he has his age and figure. "The 
true costume of the figure," he remarks, " would have 
been that in vogue towards the end of the reign of 
Charles II. This (as nearly as I can ascertain) was 
a collarless coat, perfectly straight in front, with many 
buttons, showing no waist nor cut into skirts, having 
only a short, buttoned slit behind, the sleeves hardly 
descending below the elbow, and having large cuffs, 
showing the full shirt sleeves. The vest was as long 
as the coat, and, except as to the sleeves, made ap- 
parently in the same way. The breeches were very 
full, open at the sides, and tied with strings." Mr. 
Fisher is uncertain about the hat, but we know from 
Penn's account-books that he was nice and particular 
in regard both to his hats and wigs, and that he paid 
quite a price for a pair of leather spatterdashes to use 
when riding on horseback. He also had a gig, a state 
coach and four, and a barge, manned by a coxswain 
and six oarsmen, and carrying sail besides. No such 
person seems to have any place in honest old West's 
preposterous picture. 

The antiquarians and chroniclers of Philadelphia 
have sought, with indefatigable zeal, the names of 
the persons who embarked with Penn in the " Wel- 
come" to aid him in promoting his '' Holy Experi- 
ment," and they have pursued the work so success- 
fully that it is not believed that more than four or fi\v 
of the one hundred who sailed in that ship have been 
overlooked. Apparently most of them were people 
of standing and some estate, the servants seeming to 
have been sent over in other vessels for the most part. 
Judging from the account of stores of one of these 
emigration larders, as given by Dixon, they were well 
equipped for even a longer voyage. 1 The list of pas- 

1 Dixon Bays, quoting from Thomas Story's MS. paperB, " It is not to- 
be supposed that the traveling Friends denied themselveB the little con- 
solations of the larder by the wayside. In a list of creature comfortB 
put on board a vessel leaving the Delaware for London, on behalf a 
Quaker preacher, are enumerated 32 fowls, 7 turkeys, 11 ducks, 2 



FOUNDING THE GREAT CITY. 



i*9 



sengers, derived chiefly from Mr. Edward Armstrong's 
address before the Pennsylvania Historical Society 
at Chester in 1851 (his authorities being there given 
in full), begins with 

John Barber and Elizabeth, hia wife. He was a "first purchaser," 
and made hia will on board the "Welcome." 

William Bradford, first printer of Philadelphia and earlieat govern- 
ment printer of New York. 1 

hamB, a barrel of China oranges, a large keg of s weetmeata, ditto of ram , 
a pot of tamarinds, a box of spicea, ditto of dried herbs, 18 cocoa-nuts, 
a box of eggs, six balla of chocolate, six dried codfish and five shaddocks, 
six bottles of citron water, four bottles of Madeira, five dozen of ale, one 
large keg of wine, and nine pints of brandy. There was also more solid 
food in the shape of flour, sheep, and hogs." In one of the firat cases 
tried by Ponn and his Council at Philadelphia, that of sundry paBsengera 
against James Kilner, master of the Bhip " Levee," of Liverpool, it was 
shown that the passengers had ao much beer on board that the sailors 
drank it surreptitiously by the gallon during the voyage. 

1 We have examined with care the evidence both for and against the 
asaumption that Bradford came over in the Bhip with Penn, and our 
judgment is that it is by no means proven, but, on the contrary, that the 
preponderance is against the assumption. The evidence is conflicting. 
Mr. John William Wallace, of Philadelphia, in hia able address before 
the New York Historical Society on the occasion of the celebration of the 
two hundredth birthday of Bradford (of whom he ia a deacendant), has 
summed up both sides of the case : (1) Bradford, in his American Al- 
manac for 1739, stated he was born May 20, 1663 ; (2) that Watson, Dixon, 
Armstrong, and all tradition concur in believing that Bradford came over 
in the "Welcome" with Penn; (3) Bradford's obituary, J/eic York Ga- 
zette, May 25, 1752, BayB,' *' He came to America seventy years ago" 
(which would be 1682), " and landed at a place whero now stands Phila- 
delphia, before that city was laid out or a single house built there" ; (4) 
!( But, stronger than all, hia name iB given among the names of persons 
belonging either to Philadelphia or the adjoining lower counties under 
the date of the ' 12 th of y e 7 th mo., 1683' (minutes of Provincial Council, 
i. 27)." " My supposition ia," aaya Mr. Wallace, "that Bradford came, 
took a survey of the country, returned to England, got married, and 
came finally in 1685, with his press." 

Here we have one piece of documentary evidence, the rest ia hearsay, 
tradition. Per contra: (1) Bradford's tombatone in Trinity churchyard, 
New York, says he was born in 1660 ; if he was born in 1663, his wife, 
who died in 1731, aged sixty-eight, would have been a year older than 
he, and he only nineteen when Penn brought him over tn make him 
printer for the province ; (2) The minutes of Council, quoted above, sim- 
ply show that the 12th of October, 1683, almost a year after Penn landed, 
a certain William Bradford owed the province for "28 S»a porke." This 
is not evidence that the aaid Bradford came over with Penn, or that he 
was Bradford the printer. Forty ahips had come over in that interval of 
a year, — why not some one of the name of Bradford in one of them? 
(3) We do know that William Bradford the printer did come over in 1685, 
tnat he broughtbooksfor sale as well aa printing materials, and that he 
came armed with a letter of introduction from George Fox. This letter we 
think affords indubitable evidence that Bradford did not come on with 
Penn, and had never been in the colony before. It is dated " London, 
6th month, 1685," and is addressed to leading members of the Society of 
Frienda in Rhode Island, West and Eaat New Jeraey, Pennsylvania, and 
Maryland. Fox saye, " This is to let you know that a sober young man, 
whose name is William Bradford, cornea to Pennsylvania to set up the 
trade of printing Friends' books. And let Frienda know of it in Vir- 
ginia, Carolina, Long Island, and Friends in Plymouth Pateut and Boa- 
ton. And what books you want he may supply you with ; or Answera 
against Apostates or wicked Professors Books. He may furniah you with 
our Answers ; for he intends to keep up a correspondence with FriendB 
that are Stationers or Printers here in England. . . And bo you may do 
well to encourage him. He is a civil young man and convinced of truth. 
He was apprentice with our friend, Andrew Sowle ; since married his 
daughter," etc. Now, does any one suppose that a man who had 
come out with Penn and stayed at least a year in the province would 
have needed to be introduced in this way, and had all these particulars 
told about him by Fox three years later? It is contrary to reason. (4) 
Bradford was a man of extraordinary enterprise and activity. He knew 
how to advertise himself by novel undertakings. His energy waBso great 
that he could not keep still. He came over in 1685, reaching Philadel- 
phia not sooner than October. In January, 1686 (9th of 11th mo., 1685), 



William Buckman and Mary, his wife, with Sarah and Mary, their 
children, of BillinghurBt, Sussex. 

John Carver and Mary, his wife, of Hertfordshire, a first purchaser. 

Benjamin Chambers, of Rochester, Kent. Afterwards sheriff (in 
1683) and otherwise prominent in public affairs. 

Thomas Chroasdale (Croaadale) and Agnes, hia wife, with six chil- 
dren, of Yorkshire. 

Ellen Cowoill and family. 

John Fisher, Margaret, his wife, and son John. 

Thomas Fitzwalter and eons, ThomaB and George, of Hamwortb, 
Middleaex. (He loat hia wife, Mary, and Josiah and Mary, his children, 
on the voyage.) Member of Assembly from Bucks In 1683, active citi- 
zen, and eminent Friend. 

Thomas Gillett. 

Robert Greenawat, master of the " Welcome." 

Cuthbert Hathdrst, his wife and family, of Easiugton, Bollan ', 
Yorkshire ; a first purchaser. 

Thomas Heriott, of Hurst-Pier-Point, Sussex. First purchaser. 

John Het. 

Richard Ingelo. Clerk to Provincial Council in 1685. 

Isaac Ingram, of Gattou, Surrey. 

Giles Knight, Mary, his wife, and boii Joseph, of Gloucestershire. 

William Loshington, 

Hannah Mogdridqe. 

Joshua Morris. 

David Ogden, "Probably from London." 

Evan Oliver, with Jean, hia wife, and children, — David, Elizabeth, 
John, Hannah, Mary, Evan, and Seaborn, of Radnor, Wales. (The lim, 
a daughter, born at sea, within sight of the Delaware Capes, Oct. 'J+, 
1682.) 

RoBEitT Pearson, emigrant from Chester, Penu's friend, who renamed 
Upland after his native place. 

John Rowland and Priscilla, his wife, of Billinghurst, Sussex. Fnvt 
purchaser. 

Thomas Rowland, Billinghurst, Sussex. First purchaser. 

John Songhtjrst, of Chillington, Sussex. First purchaser. (Some 
say from Conyhurst, or Hitchingfield, Sussex.) Devoted to Penn. 
Member of first and subsequent Assemblies. A writer and preaclmr 
of distinction among the Friend's. 

John Stackhodse and Margery, hia wife, of Yorkshire. ' 

George Thompson. 

Richard TowNSHEND.or Townsend, wife Anna, son James (born on 
"Welcome" in Delaware River), of London. Firat Purchaser. A fcarl- 
ing Friend and eminant minister. Miller at Upland and on Schuylkill. 

William Wade, of Hankton parish, SusBex. 

Thomas Walmesly, Elizabeth, his wife, and bix children, of York- 
shire. 

Nicholas Waln, of Yorkshire. First purchaser. Member from Buci;.s 
of first Assembly. Prominent in early hiBtory of province. 

Joseph Woodroofe. 

Thomas Wrightsworth and wife, of Yorkshire. 

Thomas Wynne, chirurgeon, of Caerwya, Flintshire, North Wales, 
Speaker of first two Assemblies. Magistrate for Sussex County. ".V 
person of note and character." (Chestnut Street, in Philadelphia, w.is 
originally named after him.) 

Dennis Rochforb and Mary, hia wife, John Heriott's daughter. From 
Ernstorfey, Wexford, Ireland. Also their two daughters, who died ;it 
sea. Rochford was member of Assembly in 1683. 

John Dutton and wife. 

Philip Theodore Lehnman (afterwarda Lehman), Penn's privme 
secretary. 

Bartholomew Green. 



was already hauled up before Council for an offense. As the record 
says, "The Secretary [Markham] Reporting to y e Council that in y° 
Chronologie of y« almanack Bett forth by Sam'U Atkins of Philadelphia & 
Printed by Wm. Bradford, of ye same place, there was these words (' tin- 
beginning of Governm't here by ye Lord PennS) the Councill Sent f-.i 
Sam'll Atkina and ordered him to blott out y* words ' Lord Penn' ; &, 
likewise for Wm. Bradford, ye Printer, and gave him Charge not to print 
anything but what shall have Lycence from y®Council." Does any un ■ 
suppose that an active person of this stamp, who could getoutanalmaiuic 
within two montliB after landing, would have remained utterly witlu.ur 
record for a year in 1682-83! (5) Bradford did not know Penn t or h>j 
never would have thought of styling him Lord Penn. On this evidence 
we Buhmit the case. 



100 



HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA. 



Nathaniel Habtuson. 

Thomas Jones. 

Jeane Matthews. 

William Smith. 

Hannah Townshend, daughter of Richard. 

Dr. George Smith, in the " History of Delaware 
County/' specifies the following as having probably 
come about the time of William Penn, some before 
and others immediately afterwards, and before the 
end of 1682 : 

KiCHAitD Barnard, of Sheffield, settled in Middletown. 
John Beales, or Bales, who married Mary, daughter of William Clay- 
ton, Sr., in 1682. 

John Blunston, of Derbyshire, his wife Sarah, and two children. A 
preacher of the Society, member of Assembly and of Council, and 
Speaker of the former body. 

Michael Blunston, Little Hallam, Derbyshire. 

Thomas Bbassey (or Biacy), of Wilaston, Cheshire. Representative 
of the Free Society of Traders, member of first Assembly. 

Samuel Br\drhaw, of Oxton, Nottinghamshire. 

Edward Carter, of Brampton, Oxfordshire, member of the first Eng- 
lish jury impanneled at Chester. 

Robert Carter, son of the foregoing. 

John Churchman, of Waldron, Essex. 

William Cobb, who gave his name to Cobb's Creek. He took the old 
Swede's mill on the Karakung. 

Thomas Coburn, his wife Elizabeth, and their suns William and 
Joseph, frum Cashel, Ireland. 

Richard Crosby, of London. 

Elizabeth Fearxk, widow, with son Joshuaand daughters Elizabeth, 
Sarah, and Rebecca, of Derbyshire. 

Richard Few, of Levington, Wiltshire. 

Henry Gibbons, with wife Helen and family, of Parvidge, Derby- 
shire. 

John Goodson, chirurgeon, of Society of Free Traders. Came in the 
ship " John and Sarah 1 ' or " Bristol Factor." 

John Hastings and Elizabeth, his wife. 

Joshua Hastings and Elizabeth, his wife. He was on the first grand 
jury. 

Thomas Hood, of Breason, Derbyshire. 

Valentine Hollingsworth, of Cheshire. Ancestor of the Hollings- 
worth family of Philadelphia (and Maryland). 

William Howell and Margaret, his wife, of Castlebight, Pembroke- 
shire, Wales. 

Elizabeth Humphrey, with son Benjamin, and daughters Anne and 
Gobitha, of Llanegrin, Merioneth, Wales. 

Daniel Humphrey, of same place as foregoing. 

David James, his wife Margaret and daughter Mary, of Llangeley 
and Glascum, Radnoi'Bhire, Wales. 

James Kenerley, of Cheshire. 

Henry Lewis, his wife Margaret and their family, of Nai-betb, Pem- 
brokeshire. 

Mordecai Maddock, of Loem Hall, Cheshire. 

Thomas Minshall and wife Margaret, of Stoke, Cheshire. 

Thomas Powell, of Rudheith, Cheshire. 

Caleb Pusey and wife Ann, and daughter Ann. 

Samuel Sellers, of Belper, Derbyshire. 

John Sharpless, Jane his wife, and children,— Phcbe, Jobn, Thomas, 
James, Caleb, Jane, and Joseph, of Huddeston, Cheshire. 

John Simcock, of Society of Free Traders, from Ridley, Cheshire. A 
leading man in the province. 

John Simcock, Jr., son of the foregoing. Jacob Simcock, ditto. 

Christopher Taylor, of Skipton, Yorkshire. 

Peter Taylor and William Taylor, of Suttin, Cheshire. 

Thomas Usher. 

Thomas Vernon, of Stouthorne, Cheshire. 

Robert Vernon, of Stoaks, Cheshire. 

Randall Vernon, of Sandy way, Cheshire. 

Ralph Withers, of Bishop's Canning, Wiltshire. 

George Wood, hia wife Hannah, his sou George, and other children, 
of Bonsall, Derbyshire. 

Richard Worrell (or Worrall), of Oare, Berkshire. 

John Worrell, probably brother of foregoing. 

Thomas Worth, of Oxton, Nottinghamshire. 



The passengers by the " John and Sarah" and 
ci Bristol Factor," so far as known, include William 
Crispin, who died on the way out, John Bezar and 
family, William Haige and family, Nathaniel Allen 
and family, John Otter, Edmund Lovett, Joseph 
Kirkbridge, and Gabriel Thomas. 

W. W. H. Davis, whose interesting history of Bucks 
County was published in 1876, says that one-half of 
the "Welcome's" passengers who arrived with Penn 
settled in that county. He names the Rowlands, 
Fitzwalter, Buckmans, Hayhurst, Ingelo, Walmsly, 
Walne, Wrigglesworth (Wrights worth?), Croasdale, 
and Kirkbridge. He also says there was a John 
Gilbert among the " Welcome" passengers. Of 
the immigrants who arrived in 1682, but did not 
come over with Penn, Mr. Davis presents quite a 
list: Richard Amor, of Buckelbury, Berkshire; 
Henry Paxson, of Bycot House, Slow parish, Ox- 
fordshire. (He embarked with his family, but lost his 
wife, son, and brother at sea.) Luke Brinsley, of 
Leek, Staffordshire, stone-mason and servant of Penn ; 
John Clows, Jr., his brother Joseph, sister Sarah, 
and servant Henry Lengart ; (there was another 
Clows contemporary with these, who had three chil- 
dren, Margery, Rebecca, and William, and three 
servants, Joseph Cherley, Daniel Hough, and 
John Richardson). There was also John Brock 
(or Brockman), of Stockport, Cheshire, with his ser- 
vants; he had two grants of land, one of one thou- 
sand acres ; William Venables, of Chathill, Staf- 
fordshire, with Elizabeth, his wife, and two children, 
Joyce and Francis; George Pownall, with Eleanor, 
his wife, five children (and three servants, John 
Breasley, Robert Saylor, and Martha Wor- 
ral), of Laycock, Cheshire ; William Yardley, 
with Jane, his wife, of Bausclough, Staffordshire, 
with children, Enoch, Thomas, and William, and 
servant, Andrew Heath. 1 

In his speech to the magistrates in his first court 
at Upland, November 2d, Penn, after giving them 
full assurances and explanations in regard to his in- 
tended course, recommended them to take inspection, 
view, and look over their town plots, to see what 
vacant room may be found therein for the accommo- 
dating and seating of newcomers, traders, aud handi- 
craftsmen therein. The proprietary was evidently 

1 Yardley was born i n 1C32, and had been a minister among the Friends 
for twenty-five years. He was a member of the first Assembly, and 
Isaac Pemberton was his nephew. This Pemberton, conspicuous in the 
affairs of the province, was the son-in-law of James Harrison, Penn's 
friend and correspondent and afterwards his steward at Pennsbury. 
After Penn sailed for Pennsylvania, in 1682, Harrison and Pemberton, 
with their families, servants, and others, embarked on the ship "Sub- 
mission" to join Yardley, part of whose land purchases (at the Falls of 
the Delaware, where he had already begun to build a house) having been 
on accountof Harrison and Isaac and Phineas Pemberton. The captain 
of the " Submission," instead of keeping his contract, landed the party 
at the mouth nf thePatuxent Rivor, Maryland. Their goods were landed 
on the othpr side of the bay, at Choptanlr meeting-house, aud it was not 
until M»y, 1683, that they, their families, and luggage finally reached 
their destination. — (See Davis, Hist. Buclcs County, and Hazard, Annuls, 
p. 600.) 



FOUNDING THE GREAT CITY. 



101 



afraid of being crowded at Philadelphia, where as yet 
but very little building had been done. Granting that 
half the thousand persons who came over with Penn 
or before or after him in 1682 were able to find some 
sort of lodgings, either on the spot or at the various 
settlements and houses along the Delaware from the 
Horekills to the Falls, and on the east side of the Dela- 
ware again from the Falls to New Salem, there would 
still remain five hundred houseless people on the site 
of the new city or about to arrive there in the next 
two months. It was the second week in November 
when the " Welcome's" passengers landed, and the 
winds must have already become bleak and cutting, 
with now and then a film of ice or a flurry of snow, 
to prevent them from forgetting that winter was about 
to come. The " first purchasers" and others who came 
over at this time were nearly all Quakers, well-to-do 
people at home, who had sold their property in Eng- 
land and sought refuge in America to escape the 
prosecutions that had been visited upon them so often 
and so severely. They had servants, and were well 
supplied with clothing and provisions. Some of them 
were delicately nurtured women and children, unused 
to hardships of any kind. To such persons there 
would have been nothing romantic and nothing in- 
viting in the prospect of a winter camp-meeting on 
the banks of the Delaware. The woods and swamps 
were so deep and thick between the two rivers that a 
span of hoppled horses lost there were not recovered 
for several months. There were no roads, scarcely 
any paths, and the low houses of the Swedes and the 
lodges of the Indians were few and far apart. But 
the Quakers were a patient, long-suffering people, and 
the lofty woods of Coaquanock afforded at least a far 
better lodging-place than the loathsome jails of Eng- 
land, in which so many of them had languished. 
The air was pure, the water was clear and good, and 
the hearts of the adventurers beat high with hope. 
Their arms were strong, and they had good teachers 
in the Swedes, and the wood was plenty, both for fuel 
and other purposes, and every one had his axe and 
his spade. Some dug holes and caves in the dry banks 
of the two rivers, propped the superincumbent earth 
up with timbers, and, hanging their pots and kettles 
on improvised stakes and hooks at the entrance, 
speedily had warm and comparatively comfortable 
lodgings in the style of what hunters used to call 
" half-faced camps." 1 

l The "caves," of which 80 much has been said in connection with the 
early history of Philadelphia, were not all made by the passengers who 
came over at the same time as Penn. The Indians dug Borne, the Swedes 
may have dug others. Dr. Mease, in his "Picture of Philadelphia" 
(1811), conjectures that the name "Schuylkill" (" hidden river") came 
from the circumstance that a good many Maryland settlers used to lurk 
on its banks, concealing themselves from the Dutch and probably the 
Indians. This is fanciful and far- fetched; the Indian names were sig- 
nificant, but the Dutch seldom were. Acrelius, in a nute upon the In- 
dian word Wicaco, or Wicacoa, derives it from Wielding, dwelling, and 
Ohiio, fir-tree. He adds that "Upon the shore by Wicaco was a place 
which was formerly called Puttalasutli, or ( Robbers' Hole.' The reason 
of that was that Borne Indians, who had engaged in robbery, had dug a 



Others rolled together forty or fifty logs, notched 
them at each end, and, aided by their neighbors, 
could in a day or two erect " log cabins," and these, 
roofed over with poles, upon which a thatch of bark 
from dead and fallen trees was laid, and the inter- 
stices between the logs "chinked" with stones, mud, 
and clay, made residences which, in some sections of 
the country, are still thought to be good enough for 
anybody. Others made more primitive huts still of 
stakes, bark, and brushwood, such as the savages 
sometimes toss together for their summer lodgings. 
The settlers had blankets and warm clothes in abund- 
ance, and we may suppose that the furs which the 
Indians brought in were in ready demand. With all 
these rude resources, we may safely believe that the 
early adventurers on the Delaware got through their 
first winter without much suffering or many deaths, 
except among the old people, with whom there seems 
to have been a considerable mortality. At any rate, 
no such cry of distress went up from Penn's first set- 
tlement as was heard from Plymouth and Jamestown 
after their first winters. If there were deaths, there 
were births also, and in one of the caves on the Dela- 
ware, long afterwards known as the " Pennypot," was 
born John Key, the first child of English parents who 
saw light within the precincts of Philadelphia. Penn 
signalized the event by presenting the child with a 
lot of ground in the city, and John Key survived to 
be eighty-five years old, bearing the cognomen of 
" first-born" as long as he lived. 

Penu was not idle while his people were getting 
ready for the winter. He sent off two messengers to 
Lord Baltimore to ask to know when he could re- 
ceive him ; he appointed sheriffs for the three coun- 
ties into which he had laid off his new province, — 
Chester, Philadelphia, and Buckingham, — and for the 
three annexed counties of Delaware (or New Castle), 
Jones, and New Deal, or Horekill ; and then he took 
horse and rode to New York to see the Governor 
there, and look into the affairs of his friend the Duke 
of York's province. When he returned he went to 
Chester, and there issued writs to all the sheriffs to 
summon the freeholders to meet on November 20th, 
to elect representatives to serve as their deputies in the 
Provincial Council and delegates in General Assem- 
bly, which were to meet on December 4th, at Up- 
land. Chester County chose three councilors and nine 
assemblymen. Nicholas More was president of the 



cave in a hill by the river and there concealed themselves. When other 
Indians went along there upon the strand to fish or hunt, these robbers 
attacked, seized, and murderedthem. The Indians around there missed 
their people from time to time, and did not know what had become ot 
them. Finally they discovered the robbers' nest. The entranco was 
well fortified, so they dug ahole through the roof on the hill and smoked 
them. Those who were besieged resolved to die in their stronghold; 
but, although they could not save themselves, they would not give up 
their booty toothers; they broke up their Secnoani or Wampumhy pound- 
ing it between stones, which was heard by those outside." This is proof 
that there were caves in the bank before the whites came, and the above 
is probably an Indian legend to explain their existence. 



102 



HISTORY OP PHILADELPHIA. 



Assembly, which met as summoned. The first day was 
devoted to organization and the selection of commit- 
tees ; on the second day the credentials of members 
and contested election cases were disposed of, and the 
house proceeded to adopt a series of rules and regula- 
tions for its government. These have no special in- 
terest, except that they show the lower house had set 
out to become a deliberative body, and was prepared 
to originate bills as well as vote upon them. The 
three lower counties sent in a petition for annexation 
and union, and the Swedes another, asking that they 
might be made as free as the other members of the 
province, and have their lands entailed upon them 
and their heirs forever. The same day a bill for an- 
nexation and naturalization came down from the 
Governor and was passed, and on the next day the 
Legislature passed Penn's " Great Law," so called, 
and adjourned or was prorogued by the Governor for 
twenty-one days. It never met again. 




SUPPOSED MEETING-PLACE OV THE FIRST ASSEMBLY AT UPLAND. 
[From Day's Historical Collections of Pennsylvania.] 

The act of union and naturalization, after reciting 
Penn's different titles to Pennsylvania and the three 
lower counties or Delaware Hundreds, and the rea- 
sons there were in favor of a closer union and one 
government for the whole, enacts that the counties 
mentioned "are hereby annexed to the province of 
Pennsylvania, as of the proper territory thereof, and 
the people therein shall be governed by the same 
laws and enjoy the same privileges in all respects as 
the inhabitants of Pennsylvania do or shall enjoy." 
To further the purpose of this act of union it is also 
enacted that " all persons who are strangers and for- 
eigners that do now inhabit this province and coun- 
ties aforesaid," and who promise allegiance to the 
king of England, and obedience to the proprietary 
and his government, " shall be held and reputed 
freemen of the province and counties aforesaid, in 
as ample and full manner as any person residing 



therein;" other foreigners in the future, upon making 
application and paying twenty shillings sterling, to 
be naturalized in like manner. This act, says Penn 
in a letter written shortly afterwards, "much pleased 
the people. . . . The Swedes, for themselves, deputed 
Lacy Cock to acquaint him that they would love, 
serve, and obey him with all they had, declaring it 
was the best day they ever saw." An " act of settle- 
ment" appears to have been passed at the same time, 
in which, owing to " the fewness of the people," the 
number of representatives was reduced to three in 
the Council and nine in the Assembly from each 
county, the meetings of the Legislature to be annu- 
ally only, unless an emergency should occur in the 
opinion of Governor and Council. 

Penn's " Great Law," passed as above recited, con- 
tains sixty-nine sections. 1 It represents the final shape 
in which the proprietary's "frame of government" 
and code of " laws agreed upon in England" con- 
jointly were laid before the Legislature. 
The variations from the original forms 
wire numerous, some of them important. 
The language of the revised code is much 
improved over the first forms, both in dig- 
nity and sustained force. The preamble 
and first section are always quoted with 
admiration, and they should have their 
place here : 

" THE GREAT LAW ; OR, the body of Laws op the 
Province of Pennsylvania and territories there- 
vnto belonging, passed at an assembly at chester, 
alias Upland, the 7th day of the 10th month, De- 
cember, 1682. 

" Whereas, the glory of Almighty God and the good 
of mankind is the reason and end of government, and 
therefore government, in itself, is a venerable ordinance 
of God ; and forasmuch as it is principally desired and 
intended by the proprietary and Governor, and the free- 
men of the Province of Pennsylvania, and territories 
thereunto belonging, to make and establish Buch laws 
as shall best preserve true Christian and civil liberty, 
in opposition to all unchristian, licentious, and unjust 
practices, whereby God may have his due, Cffisar his 
due, and the people their due from tyranny and oppres- 
sion of the one side and insoleucy and licentiousness of the other, so 
that the best and firmest foundation may be laid for the present and 
future happiness of both the governor and people of this province and 
territories aforesaid, and their posterity. Be it therefore enacted by Wil- 
liam Penn, proprietary and governor, by and with the advice and con- 
sent of the deputies of the freemen of this province and countieB afore- 
said in assembly met, and by the authority of the same, that these fol- 
lowing chapters and paragraphs shall he the laws of Pennsylvania and 
the territories thereof: 

" I. Almighty God being only Lord of conscience, father of lights and 
spirits, and the author as well as object of all divine knowledge, faith, 
aud worship, who only can enlighten the mind and persuade and con- 



1 There is a discrepancy here which it is difficult to make clear. The 
text follows Hazard ; hut Mr. Linn, in his work giving the " Duke of 
York's lawB," shows that the " Great Law" as adopted contained only 
sixty-one sections, and Mr. Hazard's classification is pronounced to be 
" evidently erroneous." In fact it is said in Council Proceedings of 
1689 that a serious lack of agreement was discovered between the Coun- 
cil copy of laws and the enrolled parchment copies in the hands of the 
Master of the Rolls. Mr. Linn also claims that Mr. Hazard is in error in 
regard to the date of the passage of the " Act of Settlement," which 
was adopted not in 1682, but March 19, 1683. 



FOUNDING THE GKEAT CITY. 



103 



vincethe understanding of people in due reverence to his sovereignty 
over the souls of mankind; it is enacted by the authority aforesaid that 
no person now or ataoy time hereafter living in this province, who Bhall 
confess and acknowledge one Almighty God to be the creator, up- 
holder, and ruler of the world, and that professeth him or herself obliged 
in conscience to live peaceably aud justly under the civil government, 
shall in anywise be molested or prejudiced for his or her conscientious 
persuasion or practice, nor shall he or she at any time be compelled to 
frequent or maintain any religious worship, place, or ministry what- 
ever contrary to his or her mind, but shall freely and fully enjoy his or 
her Christian liberty in that respect without any interruption or re- 
flection ; and if any person shall abuse or deride any other for his or 
her different persuasion and practice in matter of religion Buch shall 
he looked upon as a disturber of the peace, and he punished accord- 
ingly. But to the end that looseness, irreligion, and atheism may not 
creep in under pretense of conscience in this province, be it further 
enacted by the authority aforesaid, that according to the good example 
of the primitive Christians, and for the ease of the creation every first 
day of the week, called the Lord's Day, people shall abstain from their 
common toil and labor that, whether masters, parents, children, or ser- 
vants, they may the better dispose themselves to read the scriptures 
of truth at home, or to frequent such meetings of religious worship 
-abroad as may best suit their respective persuasions." l 

The second article of the code requires that all 
officers and persons i{ cdmmissionated" and in the 
■service of the Commonwealth, and members and dep- 
uties in Assembly, and ll all that have the right to elect 
such deputies shall be such as profess and declare they 
believe in Jesus Christ to be the Son of God and 
.Saviour of the world," etc. This was not perhaps 

1 To these primitive Quakers, ae to the Puritans likewise, Almighty 
■God Beems to have been constantly a visible, audible presence, in whose 
awful court everything, eveu the ordinary business of every-day life, 
was transacted. This is strikingly manifest in the two paragraphs juBt 
■quoted. They show, moreover, the strong influence of his peculiar doc- 
trines upon Penn's mind in framing this Constitution and laws. Gov- 
ernment was a divine ordinance, and the suppressed minor premise that 
kings were entitled to administer government by divine right, and that 
Penn's tenure under King Charles imparted some of that supernal 
authority tu himself, at once disposes of the notion that Penn had any 
just conception of a republican, much less a democratic form of govern- 
ment. He did not seek, did not desire the outward semblances of power 
for himself or his successors, but his notion of government was strictly 
paternal, and that the people needed to be fenced in against themselves 
and their own misguided passions quite as much as against external 
tyranny and oppression. This spirit seems to pervade the entire instru- 
ment, and effectively disposes of the notion, so fondly nursed by Hep- 
worth Dixon, that Penn's constitutional views were "inspired" by Al- 
gernon Sidney. Dixon would have gone much nearer the truth if he 
had sought their germs in the moral and political system of the atheist 
philosopher, Thomas HobheB, who had great influence in Penn's day. 
Many of the expressions in Penn's Constitutions curiously resemble the 
cast of thought in Hobbes' "Leviathan" and his earlier treatises, De 
Give and De Corpore Politico. Compare, for example, Penn's preamble 
with the following from the treatise De Cive; "Societates autem civil es 
□on sunt meri congressus, sed fcedera, quibus faciendis fides et pacta 
necessariasunt. . . . Alia res est appetere, alia esse capacem. Appetunt 
enim illi qui tamen conditiones sequas, sine quibus societas esse non 
potest, accipere per superbiam non dignantur." Hobbes held that the 
state of man in natural liberty is a state of war, a war of every man 
against every man, wherein the notions of right and wrong, justice and 
injustice, have no place. " For," he says, " if we could suppose a great 
multitude of men to consent in the observation of justice and other 
laws of nature without a common power to keep them all in awe, we 
might as well suppose all mankind to do the same, aud then there 
neither would be nor need to be any civil government or commonwealth 
at all, because there would be peace without subjection." (LeviatJian, 
c. 17.) This is Penn's government, "an ordinance of God, . . whereby 
the people may have their due . . . from insolency and licentiousness." 
The difference is that Hobbes node the need for strong government in 
the laws of nature, Penn in the fact of man's weakness and Almighty 
•God's supervision of human affairs. 



illiberal for Penn's day, but under it not only atheists 
and infidels but Arians and Socinians were denied 
the right of suffrage. Swearing " by the name of God 
or Christ or Jesus" was punishable, upon legal con- 
viction, by a fine of five shillings, or five days' hard 
labor in the House of Correction on bread and water 
diet. Every other sort of swearing was punishable 
also with fine or imprisonment, and blasphemy and 
cursing incurred similar penalties. Obscene words 
one shilling fine or two hours in the stocks. 

Murder was made punishable with death and con- 
fiscation of property, to be divided between the suf- 
ferer's and the criminal's next of kin. The punish- 
ment for manslaughter was to be graduated according 
to the nature of the offense. For adultery the penalty 
was public whipping and a year's imprisonment at 
hard labor ; second offense was imprisonment for life, 
an action for divorce also lying at the option of the 
aggrieved husband or wife ; incest, forfeiture of half 
one's estate and a year's imprisonment; second 
offense, the life term ; sodomy, whipping, forfeiture 
of one-third of estate, and six months in prison ; life 
term for second offense ; rape, forfeiture of one-third 
to injured party or next friend, whipping, year's im- 
prisonment, and life term for second offense; forni- 
cation, three months' labor in House of Correction, 
and, if parties are single, to marry one another after 
serving their term ; if the man be married he forfeits 
one-third his estate in addition to lying in prison ; 
polygamy, hard labor for life in House of Correction. 

XIV. Drunkenness, on legal conviction, fine of five shillings, or five 
days in work-house on bread and water; second aud each subsequent 
offense, double penalty. "And be it enacted further, by the authority 
aforesaid, that they who do Buffer such excess of drinking at their houses 
shall be liable to the same punishment with the drunkard." Drinking 
healths, as conducive to hard drinking, is subject tu fine of five shillings. 
The penalty for selling rum to Indians is a fine of five pounds. Arson 
is punished wiih amercement of double the values destroyed, corporal 
punishment at discretion of the bench, and a year's imprisonment. 
House-breaking and larceny demand fourfold satisfaction and three 
mouths in work-house; if offender be not able to make restitution, then 
Beven years' imprisonment. All thieves required to make fourfold satis- 
faction ; forcible entry to be treated as a breach of the peace, and 
satisfaction to be made for it. Rioting is an offense ■which can he com- 
mitted by three persons, and is punished according to common law and 
the bench's discretion. Violence to parents, by imprisonment in work- 
house at parent's pleasure; to magistrates, fine at discretion of court 
and a month in work-houBe ; assaults by servants on masters, penalty 
at discretion of the court, so also with assault and battery. 

XXVII. Challenges to duels and acceptance of challenge demand a 
penalty of five pounds fino and three months in work-house. Rude and 
riotous sports, " prizes, stage-plays, masks, revels, bull-baits, cock-fight- 
ing, with such like," are treated as breaches of the peace ; penalty, ten 
days in work-house, or fine of twenty shillings. Gambling, etc., fine of 
five shillings, or five days in work-house. Spoken or written sedition 
incurred a fine of not less- than twenty shillings; slighting language 
of or towards the magistracy, penalty not less than twenty shillings, 
five or ten days in the work-house. 

XXXII. Slanderers, scandal-mongers, and spreaders of false news are 
to be treated as peace- break era ; persons clamorous, scolding, or railing 
with their tongue, when convicted " on full proof," are to go to the 
House of Correction for three days. 

XXXIV. The statute for the encouragement of marriage is as it was 
quoted above in the laws adopted in England, "but" (xxxv.)" no person, 
be it either widower or widow, shall contract marriage, much less marry, 
under one year after the decease of his wife or her husband." 

XXXVI. " If any person shall fall into decay and poverty, and be un- 



104 



HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA. 



able to maintain themselves and children with their honest endeavor, or 
who shall die and leave poor orphans, upon complaint to the next jus- 
tice of the peace of the said county, the said justice finding the com- 
plaint to be true, shall make provision for them in such way as they 
shall see convenient till the next county court, and then care shall he 
taken for their comfortable subsistence." 

XXXVII., etc. "To prevent exaction in public-houses," strong beer 
and ale of barley-malt shall be sold for not above two pennies per Win- 
chester quart; molasses beer one penny; a bushel must contain eight 
gallons, "Winchester measure, all weights to be avoirdupois of sixteen 
ounces to the pound; all ordinaries must be licensed by the Governor, 
and, to insure reasonable accommodation, travelers must not be charged 
more than sixpence per head for each meal, including meats and small- 
beer; footmen to pay not over two pence per night for bedB, horsemen 
nothing, but the charge for a horse's hay to be sixpence per night. 

XL. "The daysof the week and the months of the year shall be called 
as in Scripture, and not by heathen names (as are vulgarly used), as the 
first, second, and third days of the week, and first, second, and third 
months of the year, etc., beginning with the day called Sunday, and the 
month called March." 

Sections XLI. to LXIX. and the end of this code are substantially re- 
peated from the code of laws adopted in England, which have already 
been analyzed ou a preceding page. They relate to the administration 
of justice, the courts, testamentary law, registration, and the purity of 
elections. Only a few additions and changes have been made, and these 
simply for the sake of more pei'Bpicuity and clearer interpretation. 



gave him; Penn holding firm upon his purchase, the 
king's letter, and the phrase in the Calvert charter 
confining its operations to lands hitherto unoccupied, 
a position in which Penn and the Virginian Clai- 
borne took common ground. The issue of fact as to 
whether the Delaware Hundreds were settled or un- 
settled in 1634 could not be determined then and 
there, even if the contending parties should agree to 
rest their case upon that point, as neither would do. 
The proprietaries finally parted, agreeing to meet 
again in March, and each went home to write out his 
own views and his own account of the interview to 
the Lords of the Committee of Plantations. On his 
way to Chester Penn stopped to visit the flourishing 
settlement of Friends in Anne Arundel and Talbot 
Counties, Maryland, reaching his destination on the 
29th. 

We are at a loss when we attempt to assign a par- 
ticular date to Penn's treaty with the Indians under 
the great elm-tree at Shackamaxon, if such a treaty 




PEKN'S TREATY TREE AND HARBOR OF PHILADELPHIA IN 18U0, FROM KENSINGTON. 

[From Birch's Views.] 



After the meeting of the Assembly, Penn set out 
on December 11th to go to visit Lord Baltimore, with 
whom he had an appointment for the 19th. The 
meeting took place at West River, where Penn was 
courteously and hospitably entertained. Nothing was 
accomplished, however, in the way of settling the 
boundary dispute, beyond a general discussion of the 
subject. Baltimore contended for what his charter 



was ever made. Those who are most familiar with 
the subject, and have most laboriously studied it in all 
its bearings, are convinced that the council must have 
taken place before the meeting of the Legislature at 
Upland, December 4th. This seems to have been 
assumed because no such interview could have oc- 
curred after that date in 1682; every day of Penn's 
time can be shown to have been otherwise occupied. 



FOUNDING THE GREAT GITY. 



105 



There is nothing on the record to show that there 
was such a meeting or such a treaty. Penn, always 
frank and rather exultant in the recital of his affairs, 
public and private, seems to have kept an absolute 
silence in regard to this treaty, both in his corre- 
spondence with the Lords of the Committee of Plan- 
tations and in his letters to his friends at home. In 
one of the latter, written on December 29th, the day of 
his return to Upland from Maryland, he says, " I bless 
the Lord I am very well, and much satisfied with my 
place and portion, yet busy enough, having much to 
do to please all and yet to have an eye to those that are 
not here to please themselves. I have been at New 
York, Long Island, East Jersey, and Maryland, in 
which I have had good and eminent service for the 
Lord. I am now casting the country into townships 
for large lots of land. I have had an Assembly, in 
which many good laws were passed. We could not 
stay safely till the spring for a government. I have 
annexed the territories lately obtained to the province 
and passed a general naturalization for strangers, 
which hath much pleased the people. As to outward 
things, we are satisfied ; the land good, the air clear 
and sweet, the springs plentiful, and provision good 
and easy to come at; an innumerable quantity of 
wild fowl and fish ; in fine, here is what an Abraham, 
Isaac, and Jacob would be well contented with, and 
service enough for God, for the fields here are white 
for harvest. Oh, how sweet is the quiet of these parts, 
freed from the anxious and troublesome solicitations, 
hurries, and perplexities of woful Europe." A full 
chronicle of his deeds, yet not a syllable about the 
Shackamaxon treaty, esteemed generally to be the 
greatest of all his achievements. 

We must not, however, do injustice to the universal 
tradition on the subject of this supposititious treaty, 
fortified as it is by everything except that document- 
ary evidence, the singular absence of a line of which 
casts suspicion on the whole affair. This defect is in- 
curable, of course, unless it can be shown how it oc- 
curred, or, per contra, how the traditions arose which 
unite in pointing to the fact of such a treaty and de- 
scribing how and where it was negotiated. A brief 
inquiry into this difficult subject will not be inappro- 
priate in this place, and we may begin it by stating 
the arguments in favor of the supposed negotiations. 

First. It is quite reasonable to suppose that Penn 
would have desired such a treaty and that the Indians 
would be willing to negotiate one with him. They 
expected many good things of the Friends, and were 
taught to look for the arrival of Penn, their leader 
and chief, with the lively anticipation of benefits. As 
early as 1677, in negotiations in West New Jersey 
between the Indians and Quakers (according to a 
pamphlet of Thomas Budd's, written nine or ten 
years later), the latter had endeavored to prevent 
the sale of liquors to the Indians, who seemed to 
recognize the humanity of the intention. Budd de- 
scribes a chief as saying, " Now there is come to live 



a people among us who have eyes ; they see it [rum] 
to be for our hurt, they are willing to deny themselves 
the profit of it for our good. These people have eyes ; 
we are glad such a people are come among us ; we 
must put it down by mutual consent, the cask must 
be sealed up, it must be made fast, it must not leak 
by day or by night, in light or in the dark, and we 
give you these four belts of wampum, which we 
would have you lay up safe and keep by you, to be 
witnesses of this agreement ; and we would have you 
tell your children that these four belts of wampum 
are given you to be witnesses, betwixt us and you, of 
this agreement." These Indians had already heard 
of Penn and his character and influence ; they would 
naturally have news of his arrival and come to see 
him at Shackamaxon and Pennsbury. As soon as 
Penn secured possession of his province he began 
writing letters and sending messages to the Indians, 
while his deputy, Markham, conducted successfully a 
series of land treaties with them. His letter of in- 
structions to the commissioners to lay out Philadel- 
phia bids them " Be tender of offending the Indians, 
... to soften them to me and the people ; let them 
know you are come to sit down lovingly beside them. 
Let my letter and conditions with my purchasers 
about just dealing with them, be read in their tongue, 
that they may see we have their good in our eye, equal 
with our own interest, and after reading my letter and 
the said conditions, then present their kings with what 
I send them, and make a friendship and league with them, 
according to these conditions, which carefully observe, 
and get them to comply with. . . . From time to 
time, in my name, and for my use, buy land of them, 
where any justly pretend," etc. The 11th, 12th, 13th, 
14th, and 15th articles of the " conditions and conces- 
sions" are here referred to, in which trading with 
Indians except in market is forbidden, goods sold to 
" the poor natives" are ordered to he tested, offenses 
against them punished just as offenses against whites, 
differences to be settled by mixed juries, and the In- 
dians given liberty, the same as the planters, to im- 
prove their grounds, etc. In September, 1681, we 
find George Fox sending around a circular letter 
"to all planters," especially in West Jersey, direct- 
ing them to pay attention to the spiritual welfare of 
the Indians. In Penn's letter to the Indians, sent 
them through the hands of his commissioners, he ex- 
pounds to them his principles of universal justice 
and of the common brotherhood of mankind, adding 
that " I have sent my commissioners to treat with you 
about land and a firm league of peace," and that " I 
shall shortly come to you myself, at what time we 
may more largely and freely confer and discourse of 
these matters." Penn sent by Holme, his surveyor- 
general, another letter of the same tenor to the In- 
dians, which Holme indorsed as having been read to 
them by an interpreter the sixth month (August), 
1682. The place of the reading is not mentioned, 
but Holme was at that time living with Fairman in 



106 



HISTORY OP PHILADELPHIA. 



lis house at Shackamaxon, where the Quaker meet- 
ings were held. 

Second. In 1835 the Historical Society of Penn- 
sylvania appointed a committee, consisting of Peter 
S. Duponceau, Joshua F. Fisher, and Roberts Vaux, 
to report upon a communication of John F. Watson 
in reference to " the Indian treaty for the lands now 
the site of Philadelphia and the adjacent country." 
Mr. Vaux having died hefore the work was finished, 
Messrs. Duponceau and Fisher made an exhaustive re- 
port on the subject, considering all the questions con- 
nected with the treaty or supposed treaty at Shacka- 
maxon. Their conclusion was that while no treaty was 
ever negotiated at Shackamaxon for the purchase of 
lands, with which were joined stipulations for peace 
and amity and a league of friendship (since if such a 
treaty had been made it would necessarily have been 
recorded), yet there was a solemn council held there 
for the purpose of sealing friendship between the 
Indians and the proprietary. They found their 
opinion upon certain expressions in speeches of 




MONUMENT ERECTED TO MARK THE SITE 
OF THE TREATY TREE. 

Lieutenant-Governor Keith to the Susquehanna In- 
dians in 1717 and 1722, and by Lieutenant-Governor 
Gordon in 1728-29. They are firm in their belief 
that such a treaty or conference did take place, prob- 
ably in November, 1682, at Shackamaxon, under 
the great elm-tree which was blown down in 1810. 
" The treaty was probably made," according to the 
committee, " with the Lenni Lenape or Delaware 
tribes and some of the Susquehanna Indians; that 
it was ' a treaty of amity and friendship,' and per- 
haps confirmatory of one made previously by Mark- 
ham [or the commissioners and Holme]. In the con- 
cluding language of the report, therefore, 'we hope 
that the memory of the Great Treaty, and of our 
illustrious founder, will remain engraved on the 
memory of our children and children's children to 
the end of time.' " 1 



1 Hazard, Annals, i. 03 >. 



Third. Tradition has found the place of the treaty, 
named those present, tells us that Penn came there 
in a barge, and wore a blue sash. A belt of wampum 
has come from the Penn family, which, it is claimed, 
was presented to the proprietary on that occasion. 
The great Tamanend or Tamany was chief spokes- 
man on this day, and his dress and the emblems worn 
by him of kingly power are accurately described ; in 
short, the whole scene has been set with a view to 
bring out the illusion effectively. 

On the other hand, those who do not believe that 
any such treaty was ever negotiated reply : 

First. That the treaty referred to by Keith and 
Gordon was not one made by Penn with the Lenni 
Lenapes in 1682, but one which he negotiated in 
April, 1701, on occasion of his second visit, with 
the representatives of several tribes, including the 
Susquehannocks, alias Minquas or Conestogas, the 
Shawanese, the Onondagoes, etc., which treaty is duly 
recorded in the Colonial Records. The fact that the 
Indians possessed a parchment copy of the treaty, 
which they produced in their council with Keith in 
1722, is evidence of this, there being no attempt to 
prove a written treaty in 1682. At any rate, the actual 
treaty of 1701 fits all the circumstances of the case, 
and all the allusions of the Indians and the Governors, 
far better than the assumed treaty of 1682. 

Second. It is easy for tradition to have confused the 
two occasions, and even to have set the familiar scene 
at a very early day. In his letter of Aug. 16, 1683, 
to the Society of Free Traders, Penn, writing from 
Philadelphia about the Indians, whose habits and 
language he had been studying closely in the course 
of a tour among them, describes very minutely the 
conduct of an Indian council, for he says, " I have 
had occasion to be in council with them upon treaties 
for land and to adjust the terms of trade." Then he 
gives a picture of the ordering of an Indian council, 
which might very well be taken for the original of the 
traditional accounts of the treaty under the Shacka- 
maxon elm. "Every king," he says, "hath his coun- 
cil, and that consists of all the old and wise men of 
his nation, which perhaps is two hundred people. 
Nothing of moment is undertaken, be it war, peace, 
selling of land, or traffic, without advising with them, 
and, which is more, with the young men too. . . . 
Their order is thus : The king sits in the middle of 
a half-moon, and has his council, the old and wise, on 
each hand. Behind them, or at a little distance, sit 
the younger fry in the same figure." This is the 
Shackamaxon scene exactly. One almost sees West's 
picture, or Watson's descriptions, gleaned from the 
recollections of the oldest inhabitants. But Penn 
goes on, and from depicting the general scene comes 
to delineate what was apparently an actual incident 
in his recollection. "Having consulted and resolved 
their business, the king ordered one of them to speak 
to me. . . . He took me by the hand and told me he 
was ordered by his king to speak to me, and that now 



FOUNDING THE GREAT CITY. 



107 



it was not he but the king who spoke. . . . He first 
prayed me to excuse them that they had not complied with 
me the last time. He feared there might be some fault 
in the interpreter, being neither Indian nor English. 
Besides, it was the Indian custom to deliberate and 
take up much time in council before they resolved, 
and that if the young people and owners of the land 
had been as ready as he, / had not met with so much 
delay." Now this exactly meets the case of Penn's 
undoubted and recorded treaties with the Indians for 
land in the spring and summer of 1683. In his letter 
about the Maryland boundary to the Lords of the Com- 
mittee on Plantations Penn writes: "In the month 
called May, Lord Baltimore sent three gentlemen to 
let me know he would meet me at the head of the 
Bay of Chesapeake ; I was then in treaty with the kings 
of the nations for land, but three days after we met ten 
miles from New Castle, which is thirty from the Bay." 
This was in May or June 23d, and 14th of July fol- 
lowing the treaties were negotiated with the Kings 
Tamanend and Metamequam. Here are the land 
treaties, the kings and their council, the non-compli- 
ance the first time, the delay, all the circumstances. 
" When the purchase was agreed on," adds Penn (when 
the actual business of the conference was discharged, 
in other words), "great promises passed between us of 
Mndness and good neighborhood and that the English 
and Indians must live in love as long as the sun gave 
light." Then another Indian spoke, charging the 
natives to love the Christians and so on, "at every 
sentence of which they shouted and said amen in 
their way." Finally, Penn says in this letter, written 
only a month after the transaction, "We have agreed 
that in all differences between us six of a side shall 
end the matter. Do not abuse them, but let them 
have justice and you win them." In these sentences 
we have all the data of the supposititious treaty of 
Shackamaxon, — a written bargain for land, sealed and 
paid for, and an unwritten treaty of friendship on the 
basis of justice and equity. If Penn could describe 
this event so vividly would he not have dwelt still 
more upon an earlier and more formal treaty of alli- 
ance, made when he had not been in the province a 
month, and when the Indians and everything else 
were such novelties to him ? 

Third. This described treaty covers all that Penn 
told the historian Oldmixon, to wit, that he "stayed 
in Pennsylvania two years, and having made a league 
of amity with nineteen Indian nations, established good 
laws," etc., he returned to England. Now it happens 
that there are exactly nineteen " sachamakers" who 
sign the various land deeds given by the Indians to 
Markham in 1682 and to Penn in 1683, to wit: July 
15, 1682, Kowyockhickon, Attoireham ; Aug. 1, 1682, 
Nomne Soham, June 24, 1683, Tammanen; same date, 
Essepenaike, Swanpees, Ohettarichon, Wessapoat, Keke- 
lappan; same date, Metamequan; June 25th, Winge- 
bone; July 14th, Secane and Icquoquehan; same date, 
Neneshiekan, Malebore, Neshanocke, and Osereneon; 



October 10th, Keherappan ; October 18th, Machaloha. 
And these are all the Indian deeds on record between 
the date of Markham's arrival and Penn's return to 
England. 

Is it then necessary to despoil tradition entirely ? 
We do not think so. We are loath to give up the 
great elm at Shackamaxon, with Tamanend and his 
council squatted in a double semicircle beneath its 
wide, bare branches (though there must have been a 
good deal of frost in the ground so late in November), 
and Penn with his blue sash, Markham with his scar- 
let coat, and Lasse Cock, the interpreter, in leather 
breeches and fur coat, speaking an indescribable mix- 
ture of Swedish, Dutch, English, and Indian. We 
will have to give up the barge, we suppose, for, if 
such a conference ever occurred, it must have been 
while Penn was occupying Fairman's house on the 
spot at Shackamaxon. But there is no inherent im- 
probability in the idea of such a conference. The 
Indians would be as eager to see Penn, of whom they 
had heard so much, as he would be curious to meet 
them. Suppose that, while the " Welcome" was still 
at New Castle or Upland, or after she had gone up 
the river and anchored off the mouth of Dock Creek, 
hard by the house, then just built, which soon came 
to be known as the Blue Anchor tavern, Penn's 
counselors had suggested to him, or he to them, that 
it would be a politic thing to call the Indians to- 
gether in council, so that he might ratify to them in 
person the lavish promises made in his name and on 
his behalf by his agents. The Indians would be 
notified, a day set, runners sent out, and when the 
time came there would be no difficulty in securing a 
very respectable collection of sachems and braves of 
the contiguous bands. Old Tammany might have 
been present himself if the weather was good, and 
if the "Welcome" had not yet gone down the river, 
and Penn still occupied his cabin, the ship's jolly- 
boat might very well have served him for barge in 
which to make a stately entry upon the scene. Then 
upon his arrival, after the peace pipe had been 
smoked, there might have ensued such a succession 
of speech-making and such another love-feast as Penn 
describes as having taken place after the signing of 
the land treaties in 1683, and upon newcomers like 
the passengers of the " Welcome," ignorant equally 
of the language, the circumstances, and the surround- 
ings, what they then and there witnessed might have 
made an indelible impression as the first great treaty 
with the Indians. At the same time Penn, used to 
state business, and knowing nothing had been accom- 
plished, may not have charged his memory particu- 
larly with the occurrence. The presence and acts of 
Penn and the just dealings of his followers made a 
strong and lasting impression upon the Indians, not 
only of Eastern Pennsylvania, but of the whole State 
and of New York also. They gave him a name of 
their own, "Onas" (signifying quill, or "pen"), and 
this patronymic was extended to all his successors 



108 



HISTORY OP PHILADELPHIA. 



in the executive of Pennsylvania down to quite a 
late period. His familiar name among the Delawares 
was " Miquon," and for his sake, while the savages 
in every section east of the Mississippi and north of 
the Tennessee, smarting under a thousand wrongs, 
were waging undying war against every other person 
of English descent, the peaceful garb of members of 
the Society of Friends continued to be a passport 
and a palladium. Penn's traditional policy is still 
kept up with proud consistency by the Quakers, and 
there is not a tribe, nor the vestige of a band of sav- 
ages, within all the broad extent of the United States 
. but has experienced some material benefit from this 
amiable determination of the quiet sect to right, 
wherever they can, the injuries inflicted by the white 
man upon the original owners of the soil. 

The year 1683 was a very busy one for William 
Penn. A great number of colonists arrived, building 
was very actively going on, the division of land among 
purchasers was a source of much care and perplexity, 
the lines and bounds and streets of the new city re- 
quired to be readjusted, the Council and Assembly had 
to be newly elected and organized, with much impor- 
tant legislative business before them, and there were 
besides the boundary question and interviews with 
Lord Baltimore, Indian land treaties with their te- 
dious preliminary councils and pow-wows, and in 
addition to all this an extensive and exacting corre- 
spondence. Penn, however, was equal to it all, and 
maintained his health, spirits, and energy remarkably 
well. He even found time to make an extensive tour 
through his territories, visited the Indian tribes in 
friendship with them, curiously studied their manners 
and customs, and even picked up a smattering of their 
tongue. Penn was more and more pleased with his 
province the more he saw of it, and was elated with 
the great work he had set in motion, even while he 
could not conceal from himself that his new province 
was going to prove difficult for him to govern, and 
that his liberal expenditures in behalf of its settle- 
ment would eventually plunge him deep in pecuniary 
embarrassments. 

The Governor's first care, after appointing sheriffs 
for the several counties and ordering them to issue 
writs for a new election of members of the Provincial 
Council and General Assembly, was to replat the city 
and rename the streets, which had been provisionally 
named by the commissioners and Holme. In a spirit 
of avoidance of "man-worship," Penn designated the 
streets between and parallel to the Delaware and the 
Schuylkill by numbers ; the intersecting streets con- 
necting the two rivers he named after the different 
varieties of trees and fruits indigenous to the soil. 
There were a few exceptions to this rule, concessions 
to some local peculiarity, as, for example, Front, 
High, Broad, etc. But the main body of streets bore 
names from Delaware 2d to Delaware 10th, and from 
Schuylkill 10th to Schuylkill Front Street, and from 
Cedar, going north, Pine, Spruce, Walnut, Chestnut, 



High, Mulberry, Sassafras, and Vine Streets. Lom- 
bard Street was not laid out until many years after- 
wards. This deprives Philadelphia streets of that 
historical flavor which hangs about the names of 
thoroughfares in other large cities. As Philadel- 
phia, as originally laid out, contained only about 
twelve hundred acres, it was found impossible to 
accommodate the " first purchasers" of large tracts 
of land with the city lots promised them in the 
prospectus inviting colonists. To remedy this a 
portion of territory outside the original survey was 
laid off and annexed under the name of "the Liber- 
ties," and in these the apportioned lots still undrawn 
were located. These apportionments, as finally ar- 
ranged by Penn, gave to each purchaser of land about 
two per cent, of his purchase in town lots. If he took 
one thousand acres he received twenty acres of lots 
and nine hundred and eighty acres of farm land. 
But if the lots were in the Liberties east of the Schuyl- 
kill there was a reduction of twenty per cent, in the 
size of the lots in consequence of their much greater 
value. While arranging this difficult business as re- 
spected Philadelphia, Penn also prepared for the 
distribution of rural population through the counties 
which he had opened, and particularly Chester and 
Buckingham (or Bucks as it soon began to be called), 
by laying out townships there, and "squares" around 
which the farmsteads were grouped and in which 
each landholder had his lot, just as was the case 
in Philadelphia County, and its township, Philadel- 
phia City. This system is illustrated very graphically 
on Holme's " map of the improved part of Pennsyl- 
vania." 

Penn had begun to build, likewise, on his own ac- 
count. The construction of the mansion-house at 
Pennsbury is said, rather vaguely, however, to have 
been commenced by Markham previous to the pro- 
prietary's arrival in the province, and it was now 
pushed vigorously, though Penn does not appear to 
have occupied the house permanently until his second 
visit. He also built a house in Philadelphia for his 
own use. This structure, called the Letitia house, 
and assumed to have been the first brick house erected 
in the city, is commonly said to have been put up for 
Penn's daughter, whose name it bears. Her father 
did not grant the lot to her by patent until the 29th 
of first month (March), 1701. Penn lived there when 
it was first built, and when he returned to England 
it became the official residence of Markham. The 
Pennsbury mansion, so situated as to give the Lord 
Proprietary convenient access both to his own capi- 
tal and to Burlington, the chief town in the West 
Jersey plantation, was quite an elaborate building, 
costing, with expenditures upon the grounds and 
out-buildings, from five thousand to seven thousand _ 
pounds. It was placed on a gentle eminence fifteen 
feet above high water and one hundred and fifty feet 
from the river, with a winding creek or cove flowing 
around one side of it to the rear. Not a vestige of the 



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HOLM E'S 

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PROVINCE OF PENNSYLVANIA, 

With Names of Original Purchasers from 

WILLIAM PENN. 

l68l. 



POUNDING THE GREAT CITY. 



109 



house or plantation now remains, except some gnarled 
trunks of old cherry-trees, supposed to have been 
planted by the founder. This mansion-house was, 
however, not completed until some years after Penn's 
return to England. The supervision of its construc- 










THE LETITIA HOUSE. 

tion was given to James Harrison, and Penn's letters 
to him on the subject are numerous and interesting. 
The proprietary in the first few months of his visit 
seems to have had no other thought than that of a 
permanent residence in the province, surrounded by 
his family, and in the midst of sylvan solitude and 
rural comforts. He had not then learned that new 
colonies may be harassing and intractable, and that 
the European with large home interests who goes to 
dwell in the wilderness cannot escape illustrating the 
proverb, " Out of sight out of mind." " I am much 
satisfied with my plan and portion," he wrote to one 
friend from Chester; to Lord Colepepper, just come 
out as Governor and proprietor of Virginia, he wrote, 
5th February, 1683 : " I am mightily taken with this 
part of the world ; here is a great deal of nature, which 
is to be preferred to base art, and methinks that sim- 
plicity, with enough, is gold to lacker, compared with 
European cunning. I like it so well that a plentiful 
estate and a great acquaintance on the other side have 
no charms to remove ; my family being once fixed 
with me, and if no other thing occur, I am likely to 
be an adopted American. Our province thrives with 
people ; our next increase will be the fruit of their 
labor. Time, the maturer of things below, will give 
the best account of this country." 

The new sheriffs summoned the freemen electors, 
and a new election was held under the Constitution 
and laws for members of the Council and Provincial 
Assembly. The " act of settlement," or frame of gov- 
ernment provisionally adopted by the first Legisla- 
ture in its brief session at Upland, or Chester, had ar- 
ranged for the election of a Council of twelve persons 



from each county, and a General Assembly to consist 
of not more than two hundred freemen. The people 
of the counties, however, thought that this would be 
too heavy a drain upon a scattered and as yet scanty 
population, especially at times when labor seemed to 
be of more value than law-making, and accordingly 
they simply went outside the charter and elected 
twelve members from each county, three of whom 
were designated to serve in the Provincial Council, 
the rest to act as members of the General Assembly. 
The Legislature met for the first time 
\ ;i:_.:=*| in Philadelphia, the Council and Gov- 
";%_:" €l ernor coining together on the 10th of 
March, 1683, the General Assembly two 
J days later. The members of the Council 
J3 were 

William Markliam, Thomas Holme, Lasse Cock, Chris- 
topher Taylor, .Limes narrison, William Biles, John 
Simcock, William Clayton, Ralph Withers, William 
Haige, John Moll, Edmund Cantwell, Francis Whit- 
well, John Richardson, John Hilliard. William Clark, 
Edward Southern, and John Roads. The members of 
the Assembly were: Philadelphia Comity. — John Song- 
hurst, John Hart, Walter King, Andros Bengstson,. 
John Moon, Griffith Jones, William Warner, Swan 
Swanson (Sven Svenson, one of (he Sven Sever or sons 
of Sven Shuts), and Thomas Wynne (Speaker). Bucks. 
— William Yardloy, Samuel Darke, Robert Lucas, Nich- 
olas Wain, John Wood, John Clowes, Thom;is Fitzwalter, Robert Hall, 
James Boyden. Chester. — John Hoskins, Robert Wade, George Wood, 
John Blnnston, Dennis Rochford, Thomas Bracy, John Bezar, John 
Harding, Joseph Phipps. New CastU. — John Cann, John Darby, Valen- 
tine Hollingsworth, Gasparus Herman, John Dehraef, James Williams, 
William Guest, Peter Alrichs, Henrick Williams. Kent. — John Biggs, 
Simon Irons, Thomas Hassold, John Curtis, Robert Bedwell, William 
Windsmore, John Brinkloe, Daniel Brown, Benoni Bishop. Sussex. — 
Luke Watson, Alexander Draper, William Fletcher, Henry Bowman, 
Alexander Moleston, John Hill, Robert Bracey, John Kipshaven, Cor- 
nelius Verhoof. 

Biographies of these pioneers in law-making as 
well as plantation may be found in the works of 
Thompson Westcott (particularly his exhaustive 
"History of Philadelphia"), in the work of Proud, 
and in the nice and critical investigations now being 
pursued in the Historical Magazine of the Pennsyl- 
vania Historical Society. Markham, Holme, Simcock 
are already known to the reader. The latter was the 
founder of Eidley, in Chester County. James Harri- 
son was Penn's friend, agent, and property commis- 
sioner. William Biles came from Dorchester, in Dor- 
setshire, arriving in the Delaware June 12, 1679, with 
wife, seven children, and two servants, having a grant 
from Andross of three hundred and nine acres on the 
west bank of the river below Trenton Falls. He was 
a man of talent and influence and a leader. Governor 
Evans sued him for slander, for saying, " He is but a 
boy ; he is not fit to be our Governor; we'll kick him 
out, we'll kick him out." Whitwell was an early set- 
tler on the Lower Delaware. Thomas Wynne, first 
Speaker of the first Assembly, was a Welsh Quaker 
preacher, one of the Welsh colony afterwards at 
Merion. He was an ancestor of John Dickinson. 
John Songhurst came over with Penn. William 



110 



HISTORY" OF PHILADELPHIA. 



Yardley, of Bucks, came over in September, 1682; 
a yeoman of Sussex, the founder of Yardleyville, and 
connected with the Harrisons and Peinbertons. He 
had been twenty-five years a preacher when he im- 
migrated. Haige was a London merchant. Lasse 
(Lorenz, Laurence, Larrson, or Laers) Cock, or Kock, 
was the son of Peter Larrson Kock, who came over in 
1641, servant to the Swedish West India Company. 
Lasse, his son, was Penn's interpreter and Markham's 
right-hand man. He and his family were original 
members of the old Swedes' Church at Wicaco. An- 
dros (Andreas) Binkson (Bengtsson, now Bankson 
and Benson) was one of the old Swedes. Peter Al- 
richs was son of the Dutch director on South River, 
owner of Alrichs' or Burlington Island. Gasparus 
Herman, son or grandson of Augustine Herman, of 
Bohemia Manor. Thomas Fitzwalter came over with 
Penn, and was prominent in many public affairs. 
Blunston was an immigrant of 1682, from Little 
Hallam, Derbyshire, having a certificate from the 
Quaker Meeting-house there. He was a member of 
the Society of Free Traders, and a man of consequence. 
John Bezar, or Bezear, of Bishops Canning, in Wilt- 
shire, was one of Penn's land commissioners. His 
business in England was that of maltster, and he was a 
regular preacher of the Quakers ; had been imprisoned 
and put in the stocks for attempting to preach in the 
" steeple-house'' at Marlborough. He settled at Mar- 
cus Hook. Thomas Bracey was also one of the So- 
ciety of Free Traders and an active Friend. Robert 
Wade came over with John Fenwick. He was a resi- 
dent of Upland as early as 1675. He owned Essex 
House, at Upland, built by Armgardt Pappegoya, 
which is supposed to have been the first Quaker 
meeting-house in Pennsylvania. He also was an 
active Quaker. Christopher Taylor was the best 
scholar among the Quaker immigrants, native of 
Skipton, Yorkshire, convert of George Fox, eminent 
preacher, often incarcerated, once for two years; 
taught classical schools on both sides the Atlantic, 
held important public offices, was well acquainted 
with Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and published a Com- 
pendium Trium Linguarum of those languages. Wil- 
liam Clayton came out in 1678, bought Hans Oelsson's 
share of Marcus Hook ; an active Quaker, and had a 
large part in public affairs. John Clows came over 
in 1682, previous to Penn, and John Richardson ap- 
pears to have been his servant. 1 

At the first meeting of the Council in Philadelphia, 
March 10, 1683, Penn took the chair and sixteen of 
the eighteen councilors were present. The sheriffs 
of the different counties (John Test, for Philadel- 
phia) were called in and made their returns respect- 
ing the election. The rules were of the simplest: the 
Governor ordered those speaking to do so standing, 
one at a time, and facing the chair, and the members 

1 His diary contains notes of many minor eventB in the history of the 
province. 



agreed upon a viva voce vote in all except personal 
matters. When these arose the vote was to be by 
ballot. The question of the power of electors to 
change the number of representatives without modi- 
fying the charter at once arose, when Penn answered 
that they might ■" amend, alter, or add for the Pub- 
lick good, and that he was ready to settle such 
Foundations as might be for their happiness and 
the good of their Posterities, according to y e powers 
vested in him." Then the Assembly chose a Speaker, 
and there was an adjournment of Council till the 12th. 
On the session of Council of that day nothing seems 
to have been done beyond compelling Dr. Nicholas 
More, president of the Free Society of Traders, to 
appear and apologize for having abused Governor, 
Council, and General Assembly "in company in a 
publick house, ... as that they have this day broken 
the charter, and therefore all that you do will come 
to nothing & that hundreds in England will curse 
you for what you have done & their children after 
them, and that you may hereafter be impeacht for 
Treason for what you do." Dr. More's apologies 
were ample, as became such a determined conserva- 
tive. The next day's session was occupied with im- 
provement of the rules and suggestions as to amend- 
ing the charter. It was obvious that the freemen of 
the province were determined this should be done, 
in spite of Dr. More's suggestions about impeach- 
ment. On the 15th, John Richardson was fined for 
being "disordered in Drink," and reproved. The 
question of giving Governor and Council authority 
to prepare all bills was finally settled affirmatively, 
but apparently only after considerable debate. On 
the 16th, Dr. More, of the Free Society of Traders, 
wrote to ask such an interpretation of the law against 
fornication as applicable to servants as would be 
" more consistent w th the Mr. & Mrs. Interest." This 
was the first utterance of a corporation in Pennsyl- 
vania, and it was not on the side of humanity or 
morality, but of the " master and mistress interest," — 
the society did not care how severely servants were 
punished for their vices, so that the punishment was 
not such as to deprive the corporation of their ser- 
vices. 

Among the earliest bills prepared for submitting 
to the General Assembly were the following : A bill 
for planting flax and hemp, for building a twenty-four 
by sixteen feet House of Correction in each county, 
to hinder the selling of servants into other provinces 
and to prevent runaways, a bill about passes, about 
burning woods and marshes, to have cattle marked 
and erect bounds, about fencing, showing that ser- 
vants and stock gave the settlers more concern than 
anything else. The country was so large and free 
that it was difficult to retain people in any sort of 
bondage, and, where nineteen-twentieths of the land 
was uninclosed and free to all sorts of stock, it was 
necessary to fence in improved and cultivated tracts 
to save the crops from destruction. These bills and 



FOUNDING THE GKEAT CITY. 



Ill 



other matters were given in charge of the various 
committees into which the Council now began to di- 
vide itself. On the 19th the Speaker and a commit- 
tee of the Assembly reported the bill of settlement 
(charter or Constitution) with " divers amendments," 



and cattle-brands. Also bills requiring hogs to be 
ringed, coroners to be appointed in each county, 
regulating wages of servants without indenture, bail- 
bonds, and summoning grand juries. There was offered 
likewise a law of weights, and a bill fixing the punish- 



^fam^^^rg^ 









7^*°/W?r 








PAC-SIMILE OF WILLIAM PENN'S AUTOGRAPH AND SEAL AND THE AUTOGRAPHS OF ATTESTING WITNESSES 

TO THE CHARTER OF 1682. 



which were yielded to by the Governor and Council, 
and other amendments suggested. The Duke of 
York's laws and the fees charged in New York and 
" Delaware" were also considered in this connection ; 
finally, on the 20th, there was a conference between 
the Governor and the two houses, " and then the 
question being asked by the Gov' whether they would 

have the old charter or 
a new one, they unani- 
mously desired there 
might be a new one, 
with the amendm 48 putt 
into a Law, w h is past." 
Other bills introduced 
at this time looted 
to regulating county 
courts,protested bills of 
exchange, possessions, 
"sailor's wracks," acts 
of oblivion, "Scoulds," 
seizure of goods, limits of courts in criminal cases, 
marriage by magistrates, executors and administra- 
tors, limiting the credit public-houses may give to 
twenty shillings, protecting landmarks, ear-marks, 




SEAL OF PHILADELPHIA IN 1683. 



ment for manslaughter, and it was ordered that the 
seal of Philadelphia County be the anchor, of Bucks 
a tree and vine, of Chester a plow, of New Castle a 
castle, of Kent three ears of Indian corn, and of Sus- 
sex a sheaf of wheat. The pay of Councilors was- 
fixed at three shillings, and Assemblymen two shil- 
lings sixpence per diem, the expenses of government 
to be met by a land-tax. On April 2, 1683, "the 
Great Charter of this province was this night read, 
signed, sealed and delivered by y e Gov r to y 8 inhab- 
itants, and received by y e hands of James Harrison 
and y" Speaker, who were ordered to return y e old one 
w th v e i] ear ty thanks of y e whole house, which accord- 
ingly they did." Then on the 3d, after passing some 
minor laws, the chief of which was to prohibit the 
importation of felons, the Assembly adjourned " till 
such time as the Governor and Provincial Council 
shall have occasion for them." 

The new charter, Constitution, bill of settlement, 
or frame of government was modeled upon the plan 
originally proposed by Penn. It retained in the 
hands of Governor and Council the authority to 
originate bills, but in other respects it deviated ma- 
terially from the conditions of the old charter. The 



112 



HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA. 



Council was to consist of three, and the General As- 
sembly of six members from each county. The mem- 
bers of Council served one, two, and three years 
respectively. A provision was introduced looking to 
increase of representation in proportion to the growth 
of population. The whole legislative body was to 
be called the General Assembly, and all bills becom- 
ing acts were to be called acts of such Assembly, and 
the lower house was not to adjourn until it had acted 
upon the business before it. It was, moreover, dis- 
tinctly implied in the language of the charter that 
some of the rights and prerogatives enjoyed by Penn 
under it were to cease with his life ; they were con- 
cessions to his character and his labors for the prov- 
ince, and not a final surrender of freemen's rights. 
In return Penn confirmed all in all their liberties, and 
pledged himself to insure to all the inhabitants of the 
province the quiet possession and peaceable enjoy- 
ment of their lands and estates. 

The Governor and Council were in what may be 
called continuous session, since the charter required 
that the Governor or his deputy shall always preside 
in the Provincial Council, "and that he shall at no 
time therein perform any act of State whatsoever 
that shall or may relate unto the justice, trade, treas- 
ury, or safety of the province and territories aforesaid 
but by and with the advice and consent of the Pro- 
vincial Council thereof." The Assembly, however, 
did not meet again until October 24th, when, after a 
two days' session, devoted to business legislation and 
providing that country produce could be taken in lieu 
of currency, it adjourned. The business before the 
Council during 1683 was mainly of a routine char- 
acter. The people and officials were too busily occu- 
pied in outdoor work— building, planting, surveying, 
laying off manors and townships and treating with 
Indians — to have time to spare for records and debates. 
Governor William Penn exercised his authority and 
sat as president of Council. The great number of 
ships coming and going, with their gangs of sailors, 
caused a good deal of rioting and disorder in the 
public-houses that had sprung up at several points on 
the water-front of the young city ; complaints were 
frequent, and the Governor and Council were much 
put to it for means to arrest such demoralizing pro- 
ceedings. Constables were appointed, hours set for 
early closing, and finally the Governor had to issue his 
proclamation against the offending taverns and ordi- 
naries. Servants also gave trouble in various ways, 
so that finally masters were authorized to flog them 
for slight offenses, and in case they ran away five days 
were ordered to be added to their term of service for 
every day's absence without leave. Some of the 
sailors in port also combined with other ill-conditioned 
persons to coin counterfeit money and put it in circu- 
lation. Small change was so scarce and so much 
sought after that these scamps were shortly enabled 
to dispose of a large quantity of their spurious coin 
before being apprehended. This coin was rather de- 



based than counterfeit. R. Felton testified that he 
received of the chief offender "24 lbs. of Bar'd Silver 
to.Quine for him;" this was '' alloyed" as heavily as 
it would bear with copper and " quiiied" into "Spanish 
bitts and Boston money" (Massachusetts "pine-tree 
shillings," first coined in 1652, and the old Spanish 
piece or "levy," eleven-penny bit, the coin which 
is the basis of the " piece-of-eight" or dollar, and 
which perhaps has had a wider circulation than any 
other coin ever known). These spurious coins, which 
the counterfeiters stoutly maintained were as good as 
the Spanish debased coin then in circulation, were 
passed upon some leading business men. Griffith 
Jones took eight pounds in the new "bits," and sev- 
eral other persons were victimized, so that Penn had 
to issue another proclamation. The parties were tried 
before a jury and convicted. Penn sentenced the 
ringleader to redeem all his false money, pay a fine of 
£40, and give security for good conduct. Another 
was fined £10, and a third, who turned State's evi- 
dence, got off with an hour in the stocks. There was 
also a trial of two poor wretches, both Swedes, for 
witchcraft. The jury, however, rendered a verdict of 
guilty of the " common fame of witches, but not 
guilty as indicted;" the women's husbands went se- 
curity for them, and we hear no more of witchcraft in 
Philadelphia, nor do the names of Margaret Mattson 
and Gethro Hendrickson appear again in the police 
annals. While on this subject we might as well refer 
to a singular record in the Council minutes for May 
13, 1684, as illustrative of the character and methods 
of Penn, and what he meant by creating the office of 
peacemaker or arbitrator, who might stand between 
the people and the courts and save them the expenses 
and heart-burnings of litigation. " Andrew Johnson, 
PL, Hance (Hans) Peterson, Deft. There being a 
Difference depending between them, the Gov/ & Coun- 
cill advised them to shake hands, and to forgive One 
another ; and Ordered that they should Enter in 
bonds for fifty pounds apiece for their good abear- 
ance; w 1 * accordingly they did. It was also Ordered 
that the Records of Court concerning that Business should 
be burnt." This simple, naked record of how the dif- 
ferences between Jan Jansen and Hans Petersen were 
settled is one of the most impressive examples of 
practical ethics applied to jurisprudence that was ever 
known. 

The founders of Philadelphia would not let the 
first year of its existence slip away before they had 
made some provision for education, in accordance 
with the terms of the charter and the spirit and desire 
of the people. Accordingly we read that at a meeting 
of the Council held in Philadelphia y e 26 th of 10 lh 
month, — the day after Christmas, — 1683, " the Gov r 
and Prov'll Councill having taken into their Serious 
Consideration the great Necessity there is of a School 
Master for y e Instruction & Sober Education of Youth 
in the towne of Philadelphia, Sent for Enock flower, 
an Inhabitant of said Toune, who for twenty Year 



KAPID GROWTH OF THE CITY. 



113 



past hath been exercised in that care and Imploy mt 
in England, to whom having Communicated their 
Minds, he Embraced it upon these following Termes: 
to Learn to read English 4s by the Quarter, to Learn 
to read and write 6s by y" Quarter, to learn to read, 
Write and Cast acc M 8s by y° Quarter ; for Boarding 
a Schollar, that is to say, dyet, Washing, Lodging & 
Scooling, Tenn pounds for one whole year." This 
was not a high scale of charges, but it is to be hoped 
that the spelling of the above record was not copied 
from Enock Flower's own prospectus. 



CHAPTER X. 

RAPID GROWTH OF THE PROVINCE AND CITY — 
"ASYLUM FOR THE OPPRESSED OF ALL NA- 
TIONS"— MOVEMENTS OF WILLIAM PENN, 1684- 
1699. 

When Isaac Norris the second, then Speaker of 
the Pennsylvania Assembly, sent an order to Eng- 
land, in 1751, for a bell for the State-House of Penn- 
sylvania, he directed the following words to be in- 
scribed around it, "well shaped, in large letters": 
"By order of the Assembly of the Province of Penn- 
sylvania, for the State House in the City of Phila- 
delphia, 1752," and underneath : " Proclaim Liberty 
throughout the land, unto all the inhabitants thereof." 
(Levit. xxv. 10.) This was that old "Independence 
Bell," which, recast to remedy a flaw, did proclaim 
liberty throughout the land in announcing, on July 
4, 1776, that the Declaration of Independence was 
signed. Mr. Norris was not prophesying, however, 
when he ordered the inscription and text. He was 
simply announcing what he and his fellow-citizens 
understood to be Penn's policy and that of his suc- 
cessors in the government of the province from the 
hour of its foundation, — entire freedom of conscience 
and liberty of worship to all (Christian) sects, and an 
asylum for the oppressed of all nations. The general 
knowledge throughout Europe that Penn had adopted 
such a policy as the groundwork of his Constitution, 
and the general confidence that he had both the abil- 
ity and the will to maintain it in his province, was one 
chief cause of the rapid influx of persons and families 
of al 1 nationalities to the shores of the Delaware. They 
came for ease from many cares, for relief from great 
and petty tyrannies; they came to settle and make 
themselves homes, rather than to trade and get money. 
Thus the province had from the first a heterogeneous 
population, and was saved from falling into the 
grooves of a dead and dull uniformity such as would 
have been its fate if it had been settled exclusively 
by English Quakers. Upon an indisputably strong 
and established warp of simple and ingenuous Swedish 
peasants and farmers, who constituted the body of 
the original settlers, and who have left a decided and 
durable impress upon the character of the people of 
8 



Eastern Pennsylvania and Delaware, was woven a 
parti-colored woof of many nationalities, sects, opin- 
ions, and habits, toned down, yet not reduced to abso- 
lute sameness, by the predominant drab of the English 
Society of Friends. Welsh, Irish, Scotch-Irish, Ger- 
mans, Switzers, French, Dutch and Belgians, Quakers, 
Pietists, Mennonites, Tunkers, Presbyterians, Hugue- 
nots, Calvinists, with runaways of no religion what- 
ever, and Englishmen of the Established Church, were 
all to be found among the permanent settlers of the 
province prior to or just after the end of the seven- 
teenth century, and though it took these races and 
faiths full fifty years to coalesce, and though in some 
parts of Pennsylvania society still lies, as it were, in 
distinct strata, there can be no doubt that the prov- 
ince owed much of its immediate prosperity and its 
energetic early growth to the variety of the people of 
different habits and opinions who composed its first 
settlers. Among the earliest political measures taken 
by Penn, the first law in fact of his first Legislature 
at Upland, was one establishing a general plan of 
naturalization for all "foreigners," among whom he 
curiously classed the Swedes and Dutch, who were on 
the spot so long before him. 

This act was understood and appreciated in con- 
nection with the ordinance establishing freedom of 
conscience. As early as Sept. 10, 1683, we find Penn 
naturalizing eight persons of French names, — Capt. 
Gabriel Eappe, Mr. Andrew Learrin, Andrew Inbert, 
Peter Meinardeau Uslee, Lees Cosard, Nich. Ribou- 
leau, Jacob Raquier, and Louis Boumat, — who were 
either Walloons or French Huguenots. But the pro- 
prietary had opened the way for a still larger immi- 
gration, taking advantage of the disturbed condition 
of Europe and the horrible persecutions to which 
"reformers" in every sect, Catholic and Protestant, 
were then subjected. Louis XIV. was even then 
preparing for the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, 
which was consummated two years later (1685), cost- 
ing his kingdom half a million of its most peaceable, 
industrious, and skillful inhabitants. The Catholics 
and Protestants equally persecuted the non-resisting 
sects of the Anabaptists, and in England and Wales 
the Quakers knew no rest from the pursuit of the 
sheriff and the constable. But while the English 
and Welsh Quakers had to dread the costs of the 
praemunire, and were fined, whipped, cropped, 
branded, and imprisoned for the crime of worship- 
ing God in their own way, the still more innocent 
sects of the Continent, the descendants of the Wal- 
denses, the pacific Quietists of Switzerland, Holland, 
and the German Episcopal sees, who had seceded 
from the ranks and protested against the terrible 
madness of the Anabaptists of Munster, were dealt 
with in a much more summary fashion. They were 
hung, they were broken on the wheel, they were dis- 
emboweled, they were burnt at the stake, men, 
women, and children, with their tongues riveted to 
their jaws to prevent them from testifying aloud in 



114 



HIST011Y OF PHILADELPHIA. 



the crisis and agony of their martyrdom. The great 
book of the Mennonites after the Bible, their "golden 
legend,'' gives the names of the persons and reports 
minutely the deaths of over a thousand of these in- 
nocent sufferers for opinion's sake, these victims of 
man's inhumanity to man. 1 

Penn and his co-religionists knew of these distresses 
of the defenseless brethren, both by hearsay and ex- 
perience. The Quakers had made some converts in 
Holland and the Palatinate, and they maintained a 
correspondence with many of the fugitive and hidden 
congregations of Tunkers and Mennonites in those 
sections. In 1677, after Penn had secured an interest 
in the Jersey plantations, and when he was probably 
already looking to the colonization of Pennsylvania, 
he crossed the Channel, in company with George Fox, 
Robert Barclay, George Keith, and others, to Brill, in 
Holland, and made an extensive proselyting tour in 
Holland and Germany. There were Quaker congre- 
gations in Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Leyden, and else- 
where; their preachers were protected by the reigning 
prince of the Palatine Electorate, and at Kreisheim 
(Cresheim), near Worms, a good many Mennonites 
had become Quakers. The "new brood of fanatical 
spirits," as they were called, were hunted and per- 
secuted as much as those less recent in their origin. 
Indeed, there was but little difference between the 
Quakers and the Tunkers and the disciples of Simon 
Menno, so that Barclay said that he was compelled to 
regard Fox " as the unconscious exponent of the doc- 
trine, practice, and disciplineof the ancient and stricter 
party of the Dutch Mennonites." The two sects agreed 
respecting all the salient traits of Christian life and 
duty. " Both laid the greatest stress on inward piety 
and a godly, humble life, considered all strife and 
warfare as unchristian, scrupulously abstained from 



* " De.r Blutige Schau-platz oder Marlyrer Spiegel" (*' The Bloody Spec- 
tacle, or Marty re' Mirror"), an immense folio of fifteen hundred pagea, 
in which the sufferings? of the Mennonites and Tunkers are chronicled, is 
one of the scarcest and greatest hooks ever printed in this country. It 
was originally published in Europe in Dutch, passing through many 
editions, each larger than the preceding one, from the earliest, Bet offer 
dee Heeren, in 1562, to the handsome folios of 1685, with over one hun- 
dred copper-plateB by Jan Luyken. In 1745, when the French and 
Indian war troubles began to agitate the people of Pennsylvania, the 
elders among the Tunker and Meunonite Beets feared leat their young 
folks should be led astray. To fortify them in their principles as " the 
defenseless people," it was resolved to have a German translation made 
and printed of the Martyr's Mirror. The work was intrusted to the 
celibate community of Tunker mystics, who had their monastery at 
Ephrata, in Lancaster County, under the management of their founder 
and Vorsteher, Conrad Beissel, or Valer Friedsam, as he was called in his 
retreat. The translation was made, and the work supervised by the ac- 
complished Peter MUller, the prior of the convent and its leading Bpirit. 
The paper was made at Rittenhouse's mill, and the book was printed on 
a hand-press belonging to the convent, where also the binding was done. 
The work required the labor of fifteen brothers for three years, and it Is 
by long odds the most remarkable book among early American publica- 
tions. At the time of the battle of Germantown, cartridge-paper huving 
given out, two wagon-loads of the unbound sheets of the Martyrs' Mirror 
were seized and made into cartridges for the use of Washington's army. 
— Cf article by S. "W, Pennypacker in Pennsylvania Magazine, vol. v. No. 
3,276; "Pennsylvania Dutch and other Essays," Philadelphia, 1872; 
Bupp's " Christian Denominations," etc. 



making oath, declared against a paid ministry, exer- 
cised through their meetings a strict discipline over 
their members, favored silent prayer, were opposed to 
infant baptism, and looked upon the established 
churches as unhallowed vessels of the divine wrath." 2 
It was to these people that Penn and his fellow- 
apostles directed their mission. They had found some 
sort of toleration at places in the Netherlands, where 
they were treated much more liberally than in Switzer- 
land and Germany. True, there were severe laws 
against them on the statute books, but these were not 
rigidly enforced, and though the mob pelted and abused 
them sometimes, it was done rather in sport than anger, 
and perhaps because the Quakers brought it on them- 
selves, for in spite of their non-resistance they had a 
pertinacious fashion of going into ,( steeple-houses" 

2 See article on Penn's TravelB, by Prof. Seidenstic.ker, in Pennsylvania 
Magazine, vol. ii. No. 3. The Mennonites bear the Bame relation to the 
wild John of Leyden and the Anabaptists of Munster, his followers, 
that the disciples of George Fox bear to the English Puritans. But 
while the mild asceticism of the Quakers led them to formalism and a 
quiet sort of practical self-denial and economy, the tendencies of the 
German sectaries, under the influence of a deeper sensibility, look the 
direction of mysticism. The testimony of the "inner spirit" bore a 
different fruit according to the race in whose bosom it shone. Fox was 
the natural predecessor of the shrewd and worldly wise "plain" farmer 
and merchant who built up Philadelphia; but the followers of Menno, 
the believers in the inspiration of Tauler, drifted in an equally natural 
way to the communities of the Tunkers and the monasteries of Beissel 
and others. The difference is still strongly marked, as any one may see 
who compares the proceedings of a Tunker, Mennonite, or Amish con- 
gregation in Pennsylvania or Ohio with the conduct of a Quaker meet- 
ing in Philadelphia The Mennonites claim, through their own histo- 
rians, to be lineally and theologically descended from the Waldenses; 
their enemies have reproached them with being an outgrowth of the 
Anabaptists of Munster, who carried Luther's doctrines to the extreme 
of excess and tried to promulgate them with fire and sword, outrage and 
debtiuchery. Doubtless both sides are true ; the Mennonites are in some 
measure descended from the Waldenses through the Walloons; they are 
also in a great measure an offshoot from the Anabaptists. The Judical 
difference between them was in their understanding of what is meant 
by " Christ's kingdom on earth," and how to bring it about. The fol- 
lowers of John of Leyden, Thomas Munzer, Bernhard Rothman, and 
Jean Mat thys preached the sword and torch doctrine to the down-trodden 
peasantry of Europe, whose sufferings made them only too willing to 
listen and believe. On the other hand, Menno Simon preached nothiug 
hut prayer, humility, and no n- resistance. John of Leyden was torn to 
pieces with red-hut pincers, hid hones set aloft in an iron cage, and his 
sect died with him; but the Mennonites, next to the Jews, are the most 
widely distributed religious deuomination. Menno Simon, founder of 
this sect, wasa native of Witniarsum, in Friesland, boruin 1492, educated 
for the priesthood, ami in 1536 abandoned the Catholic Church and began 
to preach to a congregation of liirf own, calling themselves the Dnopxge- 
zinde, or Rehaptizers. Ho taught the inefficacy of infant baptism or 
any other baptism without repentance, contended for the complete sev- 
erance of Church and State, aud absolute religious liberty. His follow- 
ers were enjoined nut to take the sword and not to resiBt; they swore not 
at all ; practiced feet-washing and love-feasts; assumed plain dress and 
simple manners; aud punished derelict brethren by putting them under 
the ban of avoidance and non-intercuurse. No one could deny the purity 
of their lives, their thrift, frugality, and homely virtues. It is strange 
that so ha- mlesB a people should have been bo bitterly persecuted; 
Menno Simon was hunted like, a, wild beast. One of their historians 
says of the sect that "Ah the true pilgrims upon earth, going from place 
to place in the hope to find quiet and rest, appear the Meunonites." 
Within the last ten years wo have witnessed the migration of many con- 
gregations of these peuple all the way from the banks of the Volga to 
Kansas and Minnesota rattier than violate their tenet against bearing 
arms. — Cf. papers in the Pennsylvania Magazine by Dr. De Hoop Scheffer, 
of the College at Amsterdam, Prof. Oswald Seideusticker, Mr. S. W, 
Pennypacker, etc. 



RAPID GROWTH OF THE CITY. 



115 



with their hats on and " testifying'' where they had no 
business to open their lips. Still the separatists did 
not have an easy time of it, and they looked towards 
America long before Penn came here. The Labadists 
under Sluyter and Denkers came to Maryland and 
founded a community on the Bohemia Manor about 
1680. A colony of twenty-five Mennonites had still 
earlier (in 1662) settled at Horekills, on the lower 
Delaware, under the leadership of Pieter Cornells 
Plockhoy, of Zierik Zee, but they were plundered and 
driven out two years later by Sir Robert Carr, who took 
all their property, " even to a naile." 1 These Mennon- 
ites and other, separatist sects were therefore as well 
acquainted with the promises held out by America as 
Penn could be. There were, moreover, other affinities 
and attractions which brought the German and Dutch 
Reformers into close connection with the Quakers. 
They were not only both of them in the ranks of a 
revolt against theology and orthodoxy and scholasti- 
cism, but they had also a common meeting-ground 
in the concordance of their faith in the supernat- 
ural and their doctrine of the inner life. The first 
Quakers had learned from Jacob Bohme and Tauler 
a great deal of what they preached to English plow- 
boys and tradesmen, while the Philadelphia associa- 
tions of Pordage and Jane Leadley found accept- 
ance with the German mystics. German Quakers, 
indeed, defended themselves in the courts upon the 
ground that they discovered in the sermons of Fox 
and the apologies of Barclay the very doctrines 
they had been taught to reverence in the writings 
of Johann Tauler and Thomas a Kempis. The 
Quakers found much to admire and to imitate in 
the teachings of the Pietist Jacob Spener, of Jean de 
Labadie, and the learned Anna Maria Schurman. 
Indeed, part of Penn's mission in Germany was to 
see Elizabeth, granddaughter of King James I. of 
England, who was then Abbess of Herford, in West- 
phalia, a convert of Spener's, and the protector of 
him, Schurman, and the Labadists. She had corre- 
sponded with Penn and Fox, and they were eager to 
obtain her protection for the Quakers, and to convert 
her to their faith. 

Fox and his associates held a great meeting of 
Dutch Quakers in Amsterdam, and then Penn went 
forward to visit his Stuart princess in her abbey of 
Herwerden. She was a singular character, daughter 
of Frederick V., Palatine of the Rhine, who is known 
in Bohemian annals as the " Winter King," because 
after reigning a part of the year as elected king of Bo- 
hemia, he was defeated in the battle of Prague, and lost 
not only his new kingdom, but his ancient principal- 
ity and castle of Heidelberg. Elizabeth had a serious, 
not to say masculine turn of mind. She took to 
mathematics, and established a correspondence with 
Descartes, the philosopher. She was offered the hand 



1 Pennypacker, Settlement of Geruiantown, in Penna. Magazine, vol. 
iv. No. 1. 



of the king of Poland if she would become a Cath- 
olic, but spurned the offer,.and finally, while misfor- 
tune darkened around her house and family, she gave 
herself up to pious contemplation in Herwerden. 
Penn and his sermons made a powerful impression on 
the princess, but she still did not join his society. 
He and Barclay then went on to Frankfort, where 
they were well received by various sectaries. Their 
teachings and plans must have strongly prepossessed 
the leading men in these societies, for in the very 
year in which Penn sailed for his new province a 
German company, known as the Frankfort Company, 
and from which Frankford Village takes its name, 
was formed. Of the eight original stockholders of 
this company in 1682 nearly all were mystics or 
Mennonites, or Quaker converts made by Penn during 
his visit in 1677. Jacob Van de Walle was the gen- 
tleman at whose house Penn met the Pietist Johanna 
Eleonora von Merlau, his first convert, both of them 
being attendants of Spener's collegia pietatis ; Dr. 
J. J. Schiitz, another stockholder, was also one of the 
Pietists, and a friend of Fraulein von Merlau ; J. W. 
Weberfeldt was a disciple of Bohme ; Dr. Von Maes- 
ticht was Penn's Duisburg friend ; Dr. Von Wylich, 
one of Spener's college, and the two members from 
Lubeck seem to have been Quakers. 2 Pastorius, a 
member of the reorganized Frankfort Company in 
1686, says in his autographic memoir (which is still 
in manuscript), "Upon my return to Frankfort in 
1682 I was glad to enjoy the company of my former 
acquaintances and Christian friends, assembled to- 
gether in a house called the Saalhof, . . . who some- 
times made mention of William Penn, of Pennsyl- 
vania, and showed me letters from Benjamin Furly, 
also a printed relation concerning said province; 
finally, the whole secret could not be withholden from 
me that they had purchased twenty-five thousand 
acres of land in this remote part of the world. Some 
of them entirely resolved to transport themselves, 
families and all. This begat such a desire in my soul 
to continue in their society, and with them to lead a 
quiet, godly, and honest life in a howling wilderness, 
that by several letters I requested of my father his 
consent,'' etc. We have gone into these particulars 
with something like detail because justice to the 
memory of William Penn requires it to be shown con- 
clusively that he himself gave the first impulse to the 
large and important immigration into Pennsylvania 
from Germany. Pastorius founded the first settle- 
ment at Germantown, and Pastorius would not have 
turned his eyes towards America but for Penn's pow- 
erful influence upon his converts and sympathizers 
in Germany. From this source has Pennsylvania 
derived many of her best citizens, not simply that 
honest rural population who build big barns, fatten 
large pigs, and sell incomparable butter, while eating 
four meals a day with great regularity, but the men 



2 Seidensticker, Penn's Travels, Pernio. Magazine, voL ii. No. 3. 



116 



HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA. 



of force and intelligence likewise, the people who 
rule the State by the combined weight of intellect 
and integrity of purpose. Pastorius was one of the 
best scholars of his day ; Eittenhuysen built the first 
paper-mill in the colonies, and his son was one of the 
greatest astronomers who ever lived; Saur's Bible 
was printed in German thirty-nine years before any 
English edition of the sacred volume had been issued 
on this continent, and of the merits of the great 
"Martyrs' Mirror" of Ephrata we have already 
spoken. The Speaker of the first House of Repre- 
sentatives under the Federal Constitution (Frederick 
A. Muhlenberg) was of German descent, and so have 
been seven of the Governors of Pennsylvania. Indeed, 
there are few Pennsylvanians whose families have lived 
in the State for three generations who cannot trace 
back some of their ancestors to immigrants from the 
borders of the Rhine. William Penn brought these 
settlers here almost as directly as he brought over his 
own English Quakers. 

The first impulse to the wave of German immigra- 
tion was received at Crefeld, a town on the Rhine, 
close to the Netherland country. Crefeld had an 
humble population of weavers and craftsmen, among 
them Quakers and Mennonites who had endured 
many persecutions. Penn visited and comforted these 
lowly people in 1677 during his visit to Germany, and 
they never forgot his ministrations. When the news 
of his scheme for settling the newly acquired prov- 
ince reached them, they at once prepared to send 
some of their number to recruit his forces. On March 
10, 1682, 1 Penn conveyed to Jacob Telner and Jan 
Streypers, merchants, the first of Crefeld, the second 
of a near-by village, and to Dirck Sipman, also of 
Crefeld, deeds for five thousand acres of land to each, 
to be laid out in Pennsylvania. They were thus in 
the class of " first purchasers," entitled to city lots, 
which indeed they received. Telner knew what he 
was buying, because he had already been in America. 
In November, 1682, Pastorius heard of the Frank- 
fort Company; he took an active part in its concerns, 
went to London as its agent, and there, in May and 
June, 1683, bought a tract of fifteen thousand acres 
for it, afterwards increasing the quantity of land to 
twenty-five thousand acres. The eight original pur- 
chasers were Van de Walle, Dr. J. J. Schiitz, J. W. 
Ueberfeldt, Daniel Bahagel, Caspar Merian, George 
Strauss, Abraham Hosevoet, and Jan Laurens, the 
latter an intimate friend of Telner's. When the com- 
pany was reorganized in November, 1686, the stock- 
holders were Pastorius, Johanna von Merlau, now the 
wife of Dr. J. W. Peterson, Dr. Garhard von Maest- 
richt, Dr. Thomas von Wylich, Johannes Lebrun, 
Balthasar Jawert, and Dr. Johannes Kemler, nearly 
all of them Pietists and followers of Spener. Pas- 
torius was the only one of these members who came 



1 The date lias been challenged, but Mr. Pennypncker, in his paper on 
the settlement of Germantown, renna. Mag., vol. iv. No. 1, furnishes 
conclusive evidence to establish it. 



to America; nor, indeed, does the Frankfort Com- 
pany seem to have contributed any of the first immi- 
grants to Pennsylvania from Germany. Pastorius, 
however, went out before the Crefeld colony, on their 
behalf, in part, as much as for the Frankfort Com- 
pany, and he is entitled to the credit of being the 
founder of Germantown, or, as he preferred to call it, 
Germanopolis. 

This remarkable man, Francis Daniel Pastorius, 
was born in Somerhausen, Germany, Sept. 26, 1651, 
and died Sept. 27, 1719. He came of a good family, 
of official standing, and he himself was well educated 
at the University of Strasburg, the hjgh school of 
Basle, and the law-school of Jena. He was well ac- 
quainted with the classical languages, and such mod- 
ern tongues as French, Dutch, English, and Italian. 
He began the practice of law in Frankfort, then trav- 
eled for two years in Holland, England, France, 
Switzerland, and his own country, returning to 
Frankfort just in time to hear of Penn's new-born 
province, and put himself at the head of the German 
movement towards it. He sailed from London for 
Pennsylvania on June 10, 1683, and reached Phila- 
delphia August 20th. In 1688 he married, becoming 
the father of two sons. His learning, social position, 
and administrative ability easily made him conspicu- 
ous in Germantown. He wrote much, and had much 
to do in promoting the cause of education, being him- 
self a school-teacher as well as poet, historian, and 
humorist. 

On June 11, 1683, Penn sold one thousand acres of 
land each to Govert Remke, Lenart Arets, and Jacob 
Isaacs van Bebber, a baker, all of Crefeld. These 
joined forces with Telner, Streypers, and Sipman, 
and arranged to settle a colony in Pennsylvania, the 
condition of their purchase from Penn being, indeed, 
that they should settle a certain number of families 
on their land within a specified time. A colony of 
thirteen families, thirty-three persons in all, was got 
together, including Van Bebber, Streypers, Arets, three 
Op den Graafs, with Thomas Kunders, Reynier Tyson, 
Jan Seimans, Jan Lensen, Peter Keurlis, Johannes. 
Bleikers, Jan Lucken, and Abraham Tunes, nearly 
all connected with one another or with the pur- 
chasers of the tract. They went to Rotterdam, and 
after some delays sailed from London in the ship 
" Concord" on July 24, 1683, in company with Penn's 
friend, James Claypoole, his family, and the settlers 
he was taking out. The greater part of the pur- 
chasers as well as of the settlers were Mennonites, 
" religious good people," as Richard Townshend, the 
Quaker preacher, who came over in the " Welcome," 
denominates them. Several of them were weavers 
by trade. 

The pioneers had a pleasant voyage. " The bless- 
ing of the Lord did attend us," says Claypoole; and 
Johannes Bleikers had one more in his family when 
they reached Philadelphia on October 6th than there 
were when the ship sailed. October 12th Pastorius 



RAPID GROWTH OF THE CITY. 



117 



secured a warrant for six thousand acres of land, of 
which five thousand three hundred and twenty acres 
were laid off by Thomas Fairman into fourteen lots. 
These lots were drawn for by the adventurers on 
October 25th, the scene of the division being the 
cave occupied by Pastorius. The settlers were rein- 
forced by Jurian Hartsfelder, who had been sheriff 
under Andross and received from him a patent for 
land. They at once began to dig cellars and erect 
their huts for the winter, naturally having to endure 
many hardships and privations. In the words of 
Pastorius, "it could not be described, nor would it 
be believed by coming generations in what want and 
need and with what Christian contentment and per- 
sistent industry this German township started." Some 
other immigrants arrived, including Telner, who re- 
mained on the spot for thirteen years, the central 
figure of the emigration. He was a merchant in 
extensive business in Amsterdam, and his widespread 
mercantile connections gave him great facilities in 
promoting the work of colonization. Mennonite as 
he was, we find him going on a proselyting tour in 
New England with a Quaker preacher. His chief 
estate in Pennsylvania was on the Skippack, and 
was long called "Telner's township." Peter Schu- 
macher, of Kriesheim, founder of a leading family, 
came over and settled in Germantown in 1685; the 
Kassels in 1686, in which year also a Quaker meeting- 
house was built, used both by the Friends and the 
Mennonites. Pastorius had before this constructed a 
house for himself on the city lot drawn by him, but 
he could not afford anything but oiled paper for his 
windows, and over his door he placed the inscription: 
" Parva domus, arnica bonis, procul este prqfani," — the 
reading of which tickled Penn's sense of humor. 
Streypers seems to have boasted of the fact that he 
had two pair of leather breeches, two leather doub- 
lets, stockings, and a, new hat. In 1684, Cornelis 
Bom, one of Telner's first party, kept a notion-shop, 
and increased his gains by peddling among the In- 
dians. He paid neither rent, taxes, nor excise, and 
owned a negro whom he had bought. His pigs and 
poultry multiplied rapidly; he owned horse and cow, 
and reported himself and wife to be "in good spirits." 
Bom's daughter married Anthony Morris, and from 
her are descended the distinguished Pennsylvania 
family bearing that name. William Rittinghuysen, 
who came over in 1687, was a Mennonite preacher, 
but his family had long followed paper-making, and 
in 1690 William erected on the Wissahickon that 
paper-mill which supplied paper to William Brad- 
ford, the earliest printer in the Middle Colonies. 

Dirck Keyser came over and settled in Germantown 
in 1688, a descendant of that Leonard Keyser, said to 
be one of the Waldenses, who was burned to death 
as a Mennonite at Scharding in 1527. In 1688 also 
we find Pastorius, the Op den Graaffs (now Upde- 
graffs), and Gerhardt Hendricks sending to the 
Friends' meeting-house the first public protest ever 



made on this continent against the holding of slaves, 
or, as they uncompromisingly styled it, " the traffick 
of men's body." They compare negro slavery to 
slavery under Turkish pirates, and cannot see that 
one is better than the other. " There is a saying that 
we shall doe to all men licke as we will be done our- 
selves ; making no difference of what generation, 
descent, or Colour they are. And those who steal or 
robb men, and those who buy or purchase them, are 
they not all alicke 1 Here is liberty of Conscience, well ' 
is right and reasonable ; here ought to be likewise liberty of 
y' body, except of evil doers, wch ch is another case. . . . 
In Europe there are many oppressed for Conscience 
sake ; and here there are those oppressed w ob are of a 
black Colour." This memorial is said to be in the 
handwriting of Pastorius. At the date when it was 
written New England was doing a handsome business 
in the Guinea trade, the slave depots being located 
chiefly at Newport, where the gangs and "coffies" 
for the Southern market were made up, and Dr. 
Samuel Hopkins, the earliest New Englander to pro- 
test formally and earnestly against this "traffick of 
men's body," was not born until thirty-nine years 
later. All honor therefore to these honest first set- 
tlers of Germantown, who asked categorically " Have 
these negers not as much right to fight for their free- 
dom as you have to keep them slaves?" and asked 
further to be informed what right Christians have to 
maintain slavery, "to the end we shall be satisfied in 
this point, and satisfie likewise our good friends and 
acquaintances in our natif country, to whom it is a 
terrour or fairfull thing that men should be handeld 
so in Pensilvania." The Quakers were embarrassed 
by the memorial and its blunt style of interrogatory. 
It was submitted to the Monthly Meeting at Dublin 
township, "inspected," and found so "weighty" that 
it was passed on to the Philadelphia Quarterly Meeting, 
which " recommended" it to the Yearly Meeting at 
i Burlington, which adjudged it "not to be so proper 
for this meeting to give a Positive Judgment in the 
case, It having so General a Relation to many other 
Parts, and, therefore, at present they forbore it." So 
the matter slept. 

The German town grew, sent out offshoots, had its 
representatives in the Assembly, — Pastorius and Abra- 
ham Opden Graeff, — was incorporated as a borough in 
1691, with Pastorius for bailiff, Telner and others bur- 
gesses, etc., and had power to hold a court and mar- 
ket, lay fines, and enact ordinances. The people were 
called together once a year and had the laws read to 
them, but the little town had great trouble in find- 
ing officers willing to serve. As Loher said, " they 
would do nothing but work and pray, and their mild 
conscience made them opposed to the swearing of 
oaths and courts, and would not suffer them to use 
harsh weapons against thieves and trespassers." 
Work, however, they would, and did with great in- 
dustry and great success. Their fine linen was highly 
esteemed, and so many of them were spinners and 



118 



HISTORY OP PHILADELPHIA. 



weavers that Pastorius, in devising a town seal, se- 
lected a trefoil of clover, one leaf bearing a vine, one a 
stalk of flax, the third a weaver's spool, with the 
motto, "Vinum, Linum, et Textrimtm." Was ever a 
happier community known in the world's history? 
Names of new settlers are noticeable every year, — 
Jan Jansen, next printer after Bradford, whose im- 
print is now worth its weight in gold, Kuster, But- 
ter, De la Plaine, Pettinger, etc. In 1694 there came 
to Germantown an old man and his wife. He was 
blind and poor, and his name was Cornelis Plockhoy, 
the founder and last survivor of the Mennonite colony 
broken up thirty years before at the Horekills by Sir 
Robert Carr. The good people of Germantown took 
pity on him. They gave him a few rods of ground 
for habitation and garden, built him a house, planted 
a tree before it, and collected a free-will offering for 
the support of the aged wanderers, who had found a 
home at last. What a sweet peace seems to pervade 
these simple annals of the earliest German settle- 
ments in Pennsylvania. No wonder the pastoral pipe 
of John G. Whittier gave forth music of its own 
accord in the presence of such a natural'idyl. Alas, 
however, for the little span of time during which 
such dreams retain their brightness. In 1701, before 
even the school-house took its place in the quiet com- 
munity, Germantown was building a prison, and re- 
pairing the stocks with a new and stronger frame- 
work. 

The Welsh, some of whom came over in the class 
of first purchasers, began before Penn's return to 
England to come more collectively, and to establish 
separate plantations of their own. They lauded 
chiefly at Chester in the beginning, and established 
themselves at Merion and Eadnor and Haverford. 
Their names still abound, not only in the sections 
west of Schuylkill but also in many parts of Phila- 
delphia and Bucks Counties. John ap Bevan, a pil- 
lar of Haverford Meeting in 1683, Davies, David, 
Edwards, Ellis (also a settler in Haverford in 1683), 
Evan, Evans, Harry, Hayes, Hent, Howell (of Cas- 
tlebigt, Pembrokeshire, came over in 1682), Hugh, 
Humphrey, all early settlers at Eadnor, Haverford, 
or Merion. So with the Jameses, Jarmans, Mere- 
diths, Jenkinses, Lewises, Lloyds (of whom Thomas, 
the first comer, was Penn's Deputy Governor, keeper 
of the seals, and chief justice), Miles, Morgan, Morris, 
Powell, Price, Pugh, Rutherick, Rees, Richard, Shar- 
pus, etc. The Welsh were among the earliest pur- 
chasers of large tracts of land from Penn, and they 
have given permanent names to many localities. They 
settled all the high ground between Darby Creek 
and the Schuylkill, and their natural clannishness 
made them desire to seat themselves close to one an- 
other. This was the origin of the " barony" called 
the " Welsh tract," containing forty thousand acres, 
surveyed by Holme, under instructions from Penn 
dated at Pennsbury, 13th of March, 1684. Not far 
behind the Welsh came the Scotch-Irish, whose chief 



immigration, however, does not fall within the period 
now being described. 

Penn, as has been seen, was transacting business at 
Pennsbury in March, 1684. He had been long parted 
from his family, and his affairs in England were not 
in a good condition. He had done much for his prov- 
ince and its chief city on the spot — the site along the 
Delaware which was barely inhabited in 1682 — now 
contained three hundred houses, and the province had 
a population of seven thousand. He now thought it 
good for him to return for a season to England, espe- 
cially as there was the place in which he might more 
safely hope to effect a settlement of the vexatious 
boundary disputes with Lord Baltimore, whose agents 
had invaded the lower counties, built a fort within 
five miles of New Castle, and were collecting taxes 
and rents and dispossessing tenants in that section. 
Calvert himself had gone to England in March, and 
Penn wrote to the Duke of York that he meant to fol- 
low him as fast as he could. Accordingly he prepared 
to leave the province, reorganizing the church disci- 
pline of his co-religionaries, and looking after the 
fiscal system of his civil government in a practical 
and able way. To the Friends in the province he 
said, in a circular letter addressed to them, that God 
had a work for them to do, and he wished them to be 
faithful to the measure of grace received. " Have a 
care of cumber," he entreated them, "and the love 
and care of the world. It is the temptation that lieth 
nearest to those who are redeemed from looseness, or 
not addicted to it." He wanted them to be watchful 
over themselves, helpful to one another, circumspect 
and zealous. The eye of the Lord was upon them, 
the eye of the world also, to see " how we live, how we 
rule, and how we obey ; and joy would it be to some 
to see us halt, hear evil tidings of our proceedings, as 
it would be a heavy and an unspeakable grief to 
those that wish well to our Zion." The Lord had 
brought them there, he said, had tried them with 
liberty and with power ; precious opportunities were 
in their hands, and they should not lose these through 
perversity, but sanctify God in their heart, so that no 
enchantment might prevail against Jacob nor divina- 
tion against Israel ; " but your tents shall be goodly 
and your dwellings glorious, which is the daily hum- 
ble supplication of my soul to God and your God, and 
to my Father and your Father, who are, with unfeigned 
love in that lasting relation, your tender, faithful 
friend and brother." 

The ketch " Endeavor," just arrived from England 
with letters and dispatches, was got ready to carry 
the Governor back again. He commissioned the 
Provincial Council to act in his stead while he was 
away, intrusting the great seal to Thomas Lloyd, the 
president. Nicholas More, William Welch, Wil- 
liam Wood, Robert Turner, and John Eckly were 
made provincial judges for two years; Markham was 
secretary of Council, and James Harrison was stew- 
ard of the house and manor of Pennsbury. He em- 



RAPID GROWTH OF THE CITY. 



119 



barked at and sailed from Philadelphia Aug. 12, 
1684, sending from on board the vessel ere she 
sailed a final letter of parting to Lloyd, Claypoole, 
Simcock, Christopher Taylor, and James Harri- 
son, in which he expresses the deepest affection 
for those faithful friends, and sends them his prayers 
and blessings. They had many responsibilities 
upon their shoulders, and he hoped they would 
do their duty. The letter concluded with a fer- 
vent prayer for Philadelphia, "the virgin settle- 
ment of the province, named before thou wert born." 
Penn arrived in England on the 3d of October, and 
did not again see his virgin city and his beloved 
province until 1699. The causes that detained him, 
the cares that consumed him during that long divorce, 
have been elsewhere detailed. 

Penn had given a great deal of attention and time 
to the proper and symmetrical division of his terri- 
tories. His sense of the value of real estate was 
strong, and his grasp of property was firm, as the 
great number of manors and lots reserved for himself 
and family proves. The manor of Springettsbury lay 
between Vine Street and Pegg's Run, from Delaware 
to Schuylkill, widening at Ridge road, and contained, 
eighteen hundred and thirty acres. It was clipped 
and cut down by grants and sales, however, until, in 
the final partition of Penn's estates in 1787, only one- 
tenth part of the original tract remained. Nicholas 
More, president of the Free Society of Traders, and 
one of Penn's judges, was the first purchaser who 
had a manor granted to him. This was a tract of 
9815 acres on a branch of the Poquessing Creek, 
granted in November, 1682. It was called the manor 
and township of Moreland, and lay partly in Bucks 
County. Mountjoy, another manor, was laid out in 
1683 for Penn's daughter Letitia. It contained 7800 
acres, and extended from the Welsh tract to the 
Schuylkill. It was afterwards included in Upper 
Merion township. Opposite Mountjoy, on the east 
side of the Schuylkill, was the manor of Williamstadt, 
granted to William Penn, Jr., who sold it, during his 
brief and debauched sojourn in the province, to Isaac 
Norris. It became the township of Norriton. Spring- 
field Manor, laid out for Gulielma Maria Penn, was 
northeast of Germantown ; Gilbert's Manor, one of 
Penn's reservations, was on east side of Schuylkill, 
over against the present town of Phcenixville ; above 
Mountjoy was William Lowther's manor of Billion, 
while Penn had, besides, Highlands and Pennsbury 
Manors, in Bucks, and Rockland Manor, in New 
Castle County, between Naaman's and Brandywine 
Creeks. 1 

The township of Byberry was in the northeast of 
Philadelphia County, bounded by Poquessing Creek. 
This was settled by the Wal tons before Penncameover, 
some of the " Welcome's" passengers locating in it like- 
wise. West and northwest of Byberry was Moreland ; 

1 "Westcott's History of Philadelphia, chap, xxvii. 



below it, fronting on the Delaware and cut in two by 
Pennepack Creek, was Dublin township, the lands in 
which were taken up by Fairman, Waddy, Lehman 
(Penn's private secretary), and in general by a body 
of English Quakers, who also occupied Oxford town- 
ship, justbelow it on the Delaware. The Northern Lib- 
erties lay north of Springettsbury Manor, including 
Hartsfelder's tract, north of the Cohoquinoque, and 
Shackamaxon, extending clear across the peninsula 
from Schuylkill to Delaware. Bristol township ad- 
joined Bucks County,having Tacony Creek on theeast 
and Germantown south and west of it. The lands in 
this township were taken up by such men as Samuel 
Carpenter, Richard Townshend, William Frampton, 
John Ashman, Thomas Rutter, John Day, John Song- 
hurst, Samuel Benezet, Griffith Jones, etc. The West- 
ern Liberties, afterwards part of Blockley township, 
lay south of Merion, extending from Schuylkill to 
the county line. Kingsessing was a township lying in 
the parallelogram formed by Bow Creek, Karakung 
Creek, the Delaware, and Schuylkill. West of Ger- 
mantown, east of Schuylkill, was Roxborough town- 
ship, settled by Claypoole, Turner, Lane, etc. Some 
of the intervening tracts lying in and between these 
manors and townships were taken up by Capt. Mark- 
ham, Jasper Farmer, Philip Ford, Benjamin Cham- 
bers, Jacob Pelles, Samuel Buckley, Sir Matthias 
Vincent, Adrian Vrouzen, Benjamin Furlong, etc. 

Purchasers of river-front lots had the idea that 
they would acquire with them riparian rights, or else 
that Penn meant to reserve all the river-front and the 
levee between Front Street and the Delaware for the 
common use of the inhabitants of the city. Penn, 
however, had simply reserved them for himself, and, 
as the city began to grow up, he leased these lots, for 
wharf and warehouse purposes, at very good figures. 
Samuel Carpenter paid twenty shillings rent for two 
hundred and fifty feet on the river, a quay to be 
built there, and the lease not to fall in until the ex- 
piration of fifty-one years, the tenant to pave a thirty- 
foot roadway for all passengers, keep the wharf and 
bank in repair, and build two stairways from the top 
of the bank to the river's brink. Robert Turner got 
a similar patent for a wharf between High and Mul- 
berry Streets, while the Free Society of Traders 
secured the river front south of Dock Creek. Many 
more bank and wharf grants were made, some of 
them leading to a great deal of complaint, fault-find- 
ing, petitioning, and litigation. 

Philip Ford, in May, 1682, made up for Holme's use 
a list of first purchasers and the acres they had taken, 
the total sales amounting to 565,500 acres. This list 
Holme was to use in apportioning the city lots, a task 
of no little difficulty. Holme, however, numbered 
the lots on his plat and divided them among the 
purchasers, the choice of localities being bestowed in 
proportion to the size of tracts bought. The pur- 
chasers of 1000 acres or more were given lots on 
Front and High Streets. Of these there were 81 



120 



HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA. 



lots apportioned, some of them, however, to five, six, 
seven, and eight parties, who had " pooled" their 
purses so as to get a body of land of 1000 acres and 
the advantage in choice of town lots. The Delaware 
back lots, numbering 193, were apportioned to pur- 
chasers of less than 1000 acres ; the front lots on 
Schuylkill, which were apportioned in the same way, 
numbered 84, and the back lots 150. 1 

The proceedings of Council and Assembly between 
1684 and 1699, while they might fill several pages in 
a volume of annals, may be summed up in a few 
paragraphs in a history such as this. The transac- 
tions were, as a. rule, not very important, and the 
major part of the record, outside of the regular 
routine of appointments, etc., is taken up with the 
quarrels of public officers among themselves and the 
complaints of the people against Penn and the gov- 
ernment generally. A French ship with irregular 
papers was seized, condemned, and sold by order of 
Council under the English navigation laws. There 
must have been a great many vessels on the coast and 
in the bays at this time which could not give a good 
account of themselves, and complaints of piracy are 
loud and frequent, the colonial governments being 
sometimes accused of undue leniency in their deal- 
ings with the freebooters. Governor Fletcher, of New 
York, who was also Governor of Pennsylvania during 
the suspension of Penn's authority in May, 1693, was 
on friendly terms with Kidd and others, and Nichols, 
one of his Council, was commonly charged with being 
agent of the sea-rovers. Governor Markham's alleged 
son-in-law, James Brown, was denied his seat in the 
Assembly, and put in prison for sailing in a pirate's 
vessel. The people of Lewes openly dealt with Kidd, 
exchanging their provisions for his fine goods. Teach, 
called Blackbeard, was often about the Delaware, and 
it was charged that he and the Governor of North 
Carolina and other officials of that State were alto- 
gether too intimate. 

The Council provided in 1685 for a ferry-boat, large 
enough for horses and cattle, across the Schuylkill at 
High Street, proof enough of the town's rapid growth. 
Another evidence is to be found in the provisions for 
a night-watch, and in a letter from Penn, written in 
July, 1685, showing that he was very observant of 
affairs in the city he had founded, and was well in- 
formed of matters there. He had heard much com- 
plaint, he said, about the number of drinking-houses 
and of loose conduct in the "caves." He required 
that ordinaries should be reduced in numbers without 
respect of persons and no matter what objections 



1 We give on the fac-simile of "Holme's Portraiture of the City of 
Philrtdelpliia 1 * a complete list of the lots and the names and original 
residences of the purchasers to whom they were apportioned. Such 
lists are full of material for the antiquarian atid the genealogist. The 
llucertainties and contradictory opinions and views in regard to the time 
and manner of these apportionments are fully and ably discussed by 
Mr. Lawrence Lewis in his "Original Land Titles in Philadelphia." 
Some of the obscurities of the matter, however, seem to defy research and 
baffle conjecture. 



arose, and that only respectable landlords, and such 
as are most tender of God's glory and the reputation 
of the province, should be allowed to continue in 
business. As for the caves, they should be purged. 
They were his property ; he had let persons occupy 
them for limited times (three years) while building, 
that they might not be houseless, but their time was 
up, they should be cleared, and the caves held for the 
use of other deserving persons immigrating under 
similar circumstances. "Whatever ye do," adds 
Penn, " let vertue be cherisht." The tavern-keepers 
were summoned before the Council and compelled to 
give security to keep good order. There were seven 
of these at this time, one of whom was ordered to 
"seek some other way for a livelihood." The cave- 
dwellers also received notice to get themselves house- 
room and vacate these cheap premises. These caves 
are matters of curious interest to the antiquarian. It 
is not unlikely, as has been shown on a previous page, 
that some of these excavations, if not the most of 
them, had been made by Indians for their winter- 
quarters. The falling in of any part of a river-bank, 
in consequence of freshets or changes in the current 
of the stream, would expose the extensive burrowings 
of muskrats and other animals, and suggest their en- 
largement to the savages for their own use. For de- 
fense or concealment in case of raids by hostile tribes 
nothing more serviceable could be devised. The 
Swedes dwelt in such caves in some instances at least, 
and in 1682 probably one-third the new settlers on 
the site of Philadelphia wintered in them, of course 
enlarging them and making them more comfortable. 
In 1685 these caves seem to have become low resorts, 
taverns, and the like. One of them at least was 
occupied by Joseph Knight, the publican whom the 
Council had refused to allow to continue his traffic. 
The grand jury presented him and the whole cave 
system, and the excavations were gradually filled up 
by throwing down upon them the superincumbent 
bank. 

Penn's noticeable tact and skill as a peace-maker 
and composer of personal difficulties were sadly 
missed after his departure for England. The As- 
sembly and Council got into a serious squabble in 
consequence of a difference about the prerogatives 
and dignity of the two bodies. Chief Justice Nich- 
olas More, though an able and probably upright 
man, was dictatorial and arbitrary as well as quarrel- 
some. He was not a Quaker, but he used very plain 
language sometimes, and was free-spoken. Him the 
Assembly formally impeached before Council on June 
15, 1685, upon the ground of various malpractices 
and misdemeanors, chiefly technical, or growing out 
of his blunt manners. More was himself a member 
of the Assembly from Philadelphia City and County, 2 
and that body invited him by vote to retire from the 



2 The delegation consisted of Nicholas More, Joseph Growden, Bar- 
naby Wilcox, Lawrence Cock, Gunner Rambo, and Thomas Paschall. 



RAPID GROWTH OF THE CITY. 



121 



sessions while his case was under consideration. His 
court clerk, Patrick Robinson, was ordered to fetch 
the records ot the court and refused, so the sheriff 
took him in charge. More was also sent for to come 
to the Assembly, but he replied that the House had 
voted him out and it would have to vote him in again. 
He was forthwith expelled, and Clerk Robinson de- 
clared a public enemy of the province and the privi- 
leges of the General Assembly. He was finally com- 
pelled to go to the bar of the House, where he de- 
clared that there were no records of the court save 
such as he kept in Latin abbreviations, a short-hand 
of his own, which no one but himself, not even au 
" angel from heaven," could read. Further pressed, 
he threw himself full length on the floor, and be- 
came utterly obstreperous and unmanageable, where- 
upon it was resolved to ask the Provincial Council 
to make him ineligible to hold office thereafter. This 
sort of thing was hardly decorous in any 
sort of legislature, and must have been 
particularly offensive in view of the fact 
that the Assembly held its sessions in the 
" Bank" meeting-house. A Quaker meet- 
ing-house is ever the abode of silence, 
only broken by inspiration, and such 
scenes as these with Robinson must have 
been very offensive to the strict Friends. 
But the Council was slow to follow the 
lead of the House. More was twice sum- 
moned to appear before the Council, but 
would not, and was suspended from his 
judicial functions until he made answer to 
the articles of impeachment. Robinson's 
language was declared to be indecent and 
unallowable, but the Council declined to 
remove him from office until convicted 
of what was alleged against him. This 
was proper enough, but did not suit the 
Assembly, which appointed a committee 
to wait on Council and prosecute the impeachment. 
These gentlemen, Abraham Man and John Blunston, 
demanded to know if the Council had not forgotten 
themselves in not bringing Judge More to trial, 
whereupon the Council suggested that the committee 
had forgotten themselves in coming before it without 
a petition, and they were dismissed after a sharp rep- 
rimand. Penn was much vexed at these petty brawls. 
" For the love of God, me, and the poor country," he 
wrote to Lloyd, " be not so governmentish, so noisy and 
open in your dissatisfaction." 

Penn at this time, besides his grave concerns at 
court, was busy looking after the home interests of 
his province on one side and its external interests on 
the other, now shipping wine, beer, seeds, and trees 
to Pennsylvania, anon publishing in London accounts 
and descriptions of the province and excerpts of letters 
received from its happy settlers. The proprietary was 
never fatigued even by the most minute details in any 
matter in which he desired to succeed, and his letters 



show that he anticipated and thought about every- 
thing. His supervision was needed, for Council, As- 
sembly, and Governor seem to have been equally in- 
competent to do anything besides quarrel and disagree 
in regard to privilege. In fact, underneath these 
trivial bickerings a great struggle was going on be- 
tween the representatives of the freemen of the prov- 
ince and the sponsors for Penn's personal interests and 
his proprietary prerogative. This contest lasted long, 
and Penn's friends in the end, without serving his po- 
litical interests materially, contrived to deal his per- 
sonal interests a cruel blow, by exciting the people of 
the province to hostile feelings against him, and pro- 
voking them to withhold rents and purchases, and re- 
duce his income in every possible way. Penn himself 
wrote to Lloyd, in 1686, that the ill fame the province 
had gained on account of its bickerings had lost it 
fifteen thousand immigrants, who would have gone 




THE BANK MEETING-HOUSE. 

thither had its affairs appeared more settled, but as it 
was they went to North Carolina instead. 

In 1687, James Claypoole became a member of 
Council for Philadelphia County, and its representa- 
tives in Assembly were Humphrey Murray, William 
Salway, John Bevan, Lacy Cock, Francis Daniel 
Pastorius, and Joseph Paul ; John Eckley, Thomas 
Ellis, John Goodson, William Southerby, Barnabas 
Wilcox, Joshua Cart, and John Shelten receiving com- 
missions as justices of the peace. The growth of the 
city is illustrated by the greater pains taken to buoy 
out the harbor and ship-channel and by the increased 
desire of the public to have improved roads. The road 
from Moyamensing to Philadelphia had already been 
complained of; now, in Council, a cart-road was or- 
dered to be laid out between Philadelphia and Ply- 
mouth township, and the Radnor people wanted the 
fences from their township to the Schuylkill to be re- 
moved where they obstructed the road commonly used. 
A board of road-viewers was appointed at once to lay 



122 



HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA. 



out public roads from the Ferry to Radnor, and 
another to Darby township. The Assembly, which 
met in May, also passed a, resolution to the effect that 
" the President and Council be requested to take care 
that necessary public roads be everywhere set forth 
and duly maintained, but more especially in the 
county of Philadelphia, that travelling for man and 
beast be made easie, safe, and certain." Already 
Penn had found it necessary to protect, by the ap- 
pointment of a woodsman, the woodland and timber 
on his reservations from the wholesale depredations 
of timber-getters and squatters, and he now instructed 
Markham to have the offenders prosecuted, in order 
to prevent the town from being surrounded with 
thickets of brush and undergrowth that would afford 




GKEAT SEAL OF THE PROVINCE OP PENNSYLVANIA IN 1712, OBVERSE AND REVERSE, 

[Reduced one-half. J 

a, harbor to vermin and tramps. The first regular jail 
seems to have been built this year, though, in 1683, 
William Clayton had constructed a " cage" for offen- 
ders. Lacy Cock built a log jail on Second Street, 
near Market. After it was built, however, it did not 
suit, and a house belonging to the recalcitrant clerk, 
Patrick Robinson, was rented instead. The new 
prison was built in the middle of Market Street, near 
Second. In 1702 this and the yard attached to it were 
presented by the grand jury as nuisances. This part 
of the wide area of Market Street was a grassy com- 
mon, used by the town butcher for pasturing his sheep 
before they were slaughtered. Their carcasses, after 
the animals were slaughtered, were displayed for sale 
in the same place on a movable stall. 

In February. 1687, Penn took the executive power 
away from the Council and intrusted it to a commis- 
sion of five persons, — Thomas Lloyd, Nicholas More, 
James Claypoole, Robert Turner, and John Eckly, 
any three to have power to act. He sent over many in- 
structions to this board, among others to compel the 
Council to their charter attendance or dissolve them 
without further ado and choose others, " for I will no 
more endure their most slothful and dishonorable at- 
tendance." The commissioners were enjoined to keep 
up the dignity of their station, in Council and out, and 
not to permit any disorders either in Council or Assem- 
bly, and not to allow any parleys or conferences be- 



tween the two Houses, but curiously inspect the pro- 
ceedings of both. They were further in Penn's name 
to disavow all laws passed since his absence, and to call 
a new Assembly to repass, modify, and alter the laws. 
When this commission was received, in February, 1688, 
both More and Claypoole were dead. Their places 
were supplied by Arthur Cook and John Simcock, 
and the new elections ordered gave Samuel Richard- 
son the appointment of member of Council for three 
years, while Thomas Hooten, Thomas Fitzwalter, Lasse 
Cock, James Fox, Griffith Owen, and William South- 
ersby were chosen membersof Assembly. The contests 
for privilege between Council and Assembly were at 
once renewed ; the Assembly swore its members to di- 
vulge no proceedings, and practically made its sessions 
secret; the Council asserted 
its ancient prerogatives; in 
short, the quarrel was inter- 
minable except by what would 
be practically revolution, for 
on one side was a written char- 
ter and a system of iron-bound 
laws, on the other the popu- 
lar determination, growing 
stronger every day, to secure 
for the freemen of the prov- 
ince and their representatives 
a larger share in the major 
concerns of government and 
legislation. The commission, 
in fact, would not work upon 
trial, and before the year was out Penn sent over a 
Governor for the province, an old officer under the 
Commonwealth and Cromwell, and son-in-law of that 
Gen. Lambert who at onetime was Monk's rival, — by 
name John Blackwell. 

Governor Blackwell had a troublesome career in 
office. For a peaceable, non-resistant people, the 
Pennsylvania settlers had as many domestic difficul- 
ties on their hands as ever any happy family had. 
As soon as Blackwell was inducted he was brought in 
collision with Thomas Lloyd, who would not give up 
the great seal of the province, and declined to affix it 
to any commissions or documents of which he did not 
approve. As the misunderstanding grew deeper, the 
old issue of prerogative came up again, and it was 
declared that Blackwell was not Governor, for the 
reason that, under the charter, Penn could not create 
a Governor, but only appointa Deputy Governor. An 
effort was made to expel from the Council a mem- 
ber who had insisted upon this view of the case; it 
failed, the Governor dissolved the Council, and at the 
next session the people re-elected John Richardson, 
the offending member, whom, however, Blackwell re- 
fused to permit to take his seat. From this the 
quarrel went on until we find Lloyd and Blackwell 
removing and reappointing officers, and the public 
officers declining to submit their records to the Coun- 
cil and the courts. Lloyd was elected member of 



EAPID GROWTH OF THE CITY. 



123 



Council from Bucks County, and Blackwell refused 
to let him take his seat, which brought on a violent 
controversy. The general discussion of privilege and 
prerogative in connection with these differences led 
Bradford, the printer, to print for general use an edi- 
tion of the " Form of Government and the Great 
Law," so that everybody might see for himself the 
right and the wrong of the matters in dispute. The 
expense of the publication, it is said, was borne by 
Joseph Growdon, a member of Council. It was con- 
sidered a dangerous and incendiary act, and Bradford 
was summoned before the Council and closely interro- 
gated, but he would not admit that he had printed 
the document, though he was the only person in the 
province who could have done it. There was a 
Council quarrel over this thing too, some men quoting 
Penn as favoring publicity for the acts of Assembly, 
anotherproclaiming his dread of the press, because the 
charter, in fact, made him a sort of independent prince. 
The result was the Council broke up in confusion, and 
for some time could not get a quorum together. The 
Assembly, meeting May 10th, was suddenly adjourned 
for the same reason, the popular party having dis- 
covered that by a negative, non-resistance policy of 
this sort the Governor's plans and purposes were par- 
alyzed. There were no meetings of either Council or 
Assembly from the latter part of May till the last of 
August. Then Blackwell sprung upon the Council a 
great rumor of terrible things in store for the prov- 
ince: the Indians and Papists had leagued together; 
the Northern Indians were coming down the Susque- 
hanna, and the lower counties were already muster- 
ing to resist the invasion of an army of nine thousand 
men on their way from Maryland to destroy Phila- 
delphia. Blackwell wanted instant authority to levy 
a force for defense, but the Quakers took things 
rather more quietly. They did not want an army, and 
they did not believe the rumors. Clark said if any 
such scheme of invasion had ever been entertained it 
was now dead. Peter Alrichs said there was nothing 
to be scared about. John Simcock did not see " but 
what we are as safe, keeping peaceable, as those who 
have made all this strife." Griffith Jones said there 
was no cause of danger if they kept quiet. In fact, 
the Council not only objected to a levy, but they 
laughed at Blackwell's apprehensions. Markham 
said that all such talk had no effect but to scare the 
women and children. The Governor found he could 
do nothing, and adjourned the Council. 

Next came news that James II. was dethroned and 
William of Orange king of England. The Council 
was called together, and the honest Quakers, not feel- 
ing sure which king they were under, determined 
neither to celebrate nor wear mourning, but to wait 
events, the Council amusing themselves in the mean 
time by keeping up their old feuds. Shrewsbury's letter 
announcing the new king's intention to make imme- 
diate war on the French king was laid before Council 
Oct. 1,1689, and was accompanied with the usual warn- 



ing about defensive measures and the need for com- 
mercial vessels to sail in company and under the pro- 
tection of convoys. William and Mary were at once 
formally proclaimed in the province, and a fresh dis- 
cussion arose in regard to the proper defensive meas- 
ures and the necessity for an armed militia. The 
Quakers were utterly opposed to any sort of military 
preparations. If they armed themselves, it was urged, 
the Indians would at once rise. "As we are," said 
sensible Simcock, " we are in no danger but from 
bears and wolves. We are well and in peace and 
quiet. Let us keep ourselves so. I know naught but 
a peaceable spirit and that will do well." Griffith 
Jones, moreover, showed how much the thing would 
cost and how it would increase taxation. Finally, 
after long discussions, the Quakers withdrew from 
active opposition, and the preparations for defense 
were left to the discretion of the Governor. William 
Penn himself was now in deep difficulties and partly 
a fugitive in hiding. He was afraid to act openly any 
longer as the Governor of the province. Accordingly 
he made another change, and when Governor Black- 
well called the Council together on Jan. 1, 1690, it 
was to inform them that he had been relieved of his 
office. He seemed glad to be free. " 'Tis a good day," 
he said ; " I have given and doe unfeignedly give God 
thanks for it (w oh are not only words), for, to say no 
worse, I was very unequally yoked." Penn, in re- 
lieving Blackwell, sent his commission to the Coun- 
cil, authorizing them to select three persons from 
whom he would choose a Governor; until his choice 
was made the one having the highest number of votes 
was to act, for which end another commission was 
sent over, signed and sealed in blank. In sending 
his instructions to the Council along with these com- 
missions, Penn wrote : " Whatever you do, I desire, 
beseech, and charge you all to avoyd fractions and 
parties, Whisperings and reportings, and all animosi- 
ties, that, putting your Common Shoulder to y" Pub- 
lick Work, you may have the Peward of Good Men 
and Patriots, and so I bid you heartily ffarewell." 

No better work was done at this period than the 
establishment of the first public school in Pennsyl- 
vania and Philadelphia, founded in 1689 under Penn's 
directions to Thomas Lloyd. This grammar school 
was put in charge of George Keith, a well-known 
Quaker preacher of Scotch descent, who had accom- 
panied Penn and Fox to Germany in 1677, and was 
later to cause a great religious controversy in the 
province by becoming the leader of a society of 
Friends who dissented from some of the tenets and 
practices of the Orthodox. His assistant was Benja- 
min Makin, who became principal when Keith abaa- 
doned pedagogy for polemics. Keith's salary was 
£50 per annum, with dwelling-house and school- 
house provided, and the profits of the school besides 
for one year. If he thought fit to stay longer and 
teach the children of the poor without charge, his 
salary was to be doubled for two years. The school was 



124 



HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA. 



afterwards chartered by enterprising citizens such as 
Samuel Carpenter, Anthony Morris, Edward Shippen, 
James Fox, David Lloyd, William Southby, and John 
Jones, and adopted a characteristic seal, with an open 
book containing the Greek motto " $tAe tc aA/bjAouf " and 
the inscription, "Good Instruction is better than 
Riches." The building stood on Fourth Street, below 
Chestnut, and this old Philadelphia High School had 
a high reputation fur a great many years, numbering 
among its teachers, besides Keith and Makin, such 
men as D. J. Dove, Robert Proud, the historian, Wil- 
liam Wanney, Jeremiah Todd, and Charles Thom- 
son, the secretary of the Continental Congress. 

The Council, acting upon Penn's instructions and 
commission, on Jan. 2, 3 690, elected Thomas Lloyd 
president and de facto Deputy Governor. Lloyd was 
also chosen justice of the peace for Philadelphia, 
along with John Eckly, Robert Turner, William Sal- 
way, Barnaby Wilcox, Francis Rawle, John Holme, 
and Lasse Cock. The Provincial Councilors elected 
for Philadelphia, May 31st, were Griffith Owen and 
Thomas Duckett, for the remaining term of John 
Eckly ; Assemblymen, William Salway, Humphrey 
Murray, Thomas Fitzwalter, Charles Pickering, Paul 
Sanders, and Abraham Op de GraafF. The old French 
war, accompanied as it was with many atrocities by 
Indians near the border, gave the Philadelphians 
great concern about this time, but the Friends still 
continued to maintain their pacific and non-resisting 
attitude. In internal administration they were not 
so successful. To personal feuds were now added 
local jealousies. The lower Delaware counties were 
envious of the growth of Philadelphia, Bucks, and 
Chester. The traditions and manners of the different 
sections had little similarity. Finally the bad feeling 
grew so strong as to lead to secession. The Delaware 
counties (or "territories," as they were called) held a 
separate Council, elected their own judges, and finally 
compelled Penn, in 1691, much against his will, to 
divide the government, which he did by continuing 
Lloyd as Deputy Governor of the province, and ap- 
pointing Markham Deputy Governor of the terri- 
tories. George Keith also had at this time begun to 
agitate in behalf of his schism. He was a man of 
learning, but fierce, contentious, turbulent, and vin- 
dictive. A good preacher, his language was rude, 
coarse, aud malignant, and he had every trait of the 
agitator in his character. Keith was an extremist. 
He held that Quakers could not consistently or law- 
fully take any part in the administration of civil gov- 
ernment, therefore, in other words, that a Quaker 
community was impossible, and that Penn's "holy 
experiment" would not be conducted without depart- 
ing from Penn's religious faith, and that it was con- 
trary to Quaker principles to be concerned in the 
apprehension of criminals. He took advantage of a 
hue aud cry raised for the capture of a certain Bab- 
bitt and his associates, who had stolen a boat and 
gone down the river upon a plundering and piratical 



expedition, to lecture the magistracy severely for their 
reprehensible and un-Friendlike conduct. Keith set 
up a separate meeting in Philadelphia, whereupon he 
was dismissed by his society and finally presented by 
the grand jury, together with Thomas Budd, for de- 
famation and trying to blacken the character of Sam- 
uel Jennings, a provincial judge. They were tried, 
convicted, and fined £5 each. Keith went to England, 
joined the Established Church, was ordained minister 
by the Bishop of London, and presently returned to 
Philadelphia a full-fledged Episcopalian divine, in 
surplice and cassock. His simple-minded followers 
could not recognize him in such a disguise, and the 
community ceased to be disturbed on his account. 
Finding his influence gone, he went to England 
again and secured a church living in Surrey, from 
which he wrote with much bitterness against the so- 
ciety to which he had formerly belonged. Keith's 
apostasy had the effect to drive a better man than he 
was out of the province. William Bradford had been 
arraigned before the Council for printing one of 
Keith's virulent tracts, and was treated with so much 
severity that he left Philadelphia and set up his forms 
and presses in New York. 

The French and Indian hostilities on the frontier, 
the apathy and non-resistance of the Quakers, and the 
ambiguous position of Penn, lurking in concealment 
with an indictment hanging over his head, were made 
the pretexts for taking the government of Penn's 
province away from him. His intimate relations with 
the dethroned king, and the fact that his province, as 
well as the Delaware Hundreds, had been James' 
private property, and were still governed to some 
extent by " the Duke of York's laws," probably had 
much to do with prompting this extreme measure. 
Governor Benjamin Fletcher, of New York, was made 
"Captain-General" of Pennsylvania on Oct. 24, 1692, 
by royal patent. He came to Philadelphia April 26, 
1693, had his letters patent read in the market-place, 
and offered the test oaths to the members of the Coun- 
cil. Thomas Lloyd refused to take them, but Mark- 
ham, Andrew Robeson, William Turner, William 
Salway, and Lasse Cock all subscribed. Fletcher 
made Markham his Lieutenant-Governor, to preside 
over Council in the captain-general's absence in New 
York. He reunited the Delaware Hundreds to the 
province, but did not succeed in harmonizing affairs 
in his new government. The Council and he fell out 
about the election of representatives to the Assembly. 
When the Legislature met, Fletcher demanded men 
and money to aid New York in carrying on the war 
with the French and Indians. The Assembly refused 
to comply unless the vote of supplies was preceded 
by a redress of grievances. Fletcher tried to reason 
with them. " I would have you consider," he said 
in his speech to the Assembly, "the walls about 
your gardens and orchards, your doors and locks 
of your houses, mastiff dogs, and such other things as 
you make use of to defend your goods and property 



KAPID GKOWTH OF THE CITY. 



125 



against thieves and robbers, are the same courses 
that their majesties take for their forts, garrisons, and 
soldiers, etc., to secure their kingdom and provinces, 
and you as well as the rest of their subjects." But 
the Quakers were not to be convinced by any such 
arguments. Fletcher had reduced the number of As- 
semblymen, and when the Legislature met on May 
16th, Philadelphia was represented by four persons, — 
Samuel Carpenter, Samuel Richardson, John White, 
and James Fox. The first thing before the General 
Assembly was a proposition to raise money by taxa- 
tion, — the first tax levied in Pennsylvania, — and an 
act was passed levying a penny a pound on property 
for the support of government. The sum thus raised 
amounted to seven hundred and sixty pounds sixteen 
shillings, of which Philadelphia contributed three 
hundred and fourteen pounds eleven shillings, or forty- 
one per cent, of the whole. Thus far Fletcher suc- 
ceeded, only to fail, however, when he attempted to 
secure the passage of a law providing for organizing 
the militia. The Assembly did pass an act providing 
for the education of children, and also one for the es- 
tablishment of a post-office. A good deal of practical 
local improvement was made by the Council under 
Markham's influence, for he was an active, energetic 
man, and knew the town, the people, and their wants 
better than any other person could do. Among these 
regulations, without consultation with the Assembly, 
were several orders in regard to the Schuylkill ferry, 
where one man had attempted to set up a monopoly; 
and one for the establishment and conduct of the 
market, which was now removed from Delaware Front 
Street, corner of High, to Second Street where it 
crosses High. A place was to be staked out, bell-house 
erected, etc. There were to be two markets a week, 
on Wednesdays and Saturdays ; all sorts of provisions 
brought to Philadelphia for sale — " flesh, fish, tame 
foull, butter, eggs, cheese, herbs, fruitts, and roots, etc.'' 
— were to be sold in this market-place, under penalty of 
forfeiture if offered elsewhere. The market was to open 
at the sound of the bell, which was to be rung in sum- 
mer between six and seven o'clock a.m., in winter be- 
tween eight o'clock and nine ; sales made before hours 
(except to Governor and Lieutenant-Governor) to be 
forfeited. All were forbidden to buy or price these pro- 
visions on their way to market, and hucksters could not 
buy until the market had been open two hours. The 
clerk of the market received half of all forfeitures, to- 
gether with sixpence per head on allslaughtered cattle, 
two pence for each sheep, calf, and lamb, three pence 
for each pig, but no charge made on what the country 
people bring to market ready killed. He was also to 
be paid a penny each for " sealing" weights and 
measures. 

In the winter of 1693, Penn was acquitted by the 
king of all charges against him and restored to favor, 
his government being confirmed to him anew by let- 
ters patent granted in August, 1694. Penn would 
probably have returned to his province immediately 



after his exoneration, but his wife was ill, and died 
in February, 1694. This great affliction and the dis- 
ordered state of his finances detained him in England 
several years longer. After his government was re- 
stored to him, his old friend and deputy, Thomas 
Lloyd, having died, Penn once more appointed his 
cousin, William Markham, to be Deputy Governor, 
with John Goodson and Samuel Carpenter for assist- 
ants. These commissions reached Markham on March 
25, 1695. 

In the mean time Governor Fletcher, with his dep- 
uty (this same Markham), had been encountering the 
old difficulties with Council and Assembly during 
1694-95. The dread of French and Indians still 
prevailed, but it was not sufficient to induce the 
Quakers of the province to favor a military regime. 
Indeed, Tammany and his bands of Delawares had 
given the best proof of their pacific intentions by 
coming into Philadelphia and entreating the Gov- 
ernor and Council to interfere to prevent the Five 
Nations from forcing them into the fight with the 
French and Hurons. They did not want to have 
anything to do with the war, but to live, as they had 
been living, in concord and quiet with their neigh- 
bors the Friends. There is no evidence that the 
league of amity, implied or written, had ever been 
seriously broken. The Indians would sometimes be 
drunk and disorderly, and sometimes would steal a 
pig or a calf, but that was all. As Tammany said 
in this conference with Fletcher and Markham, " We 
and the Christians of this river have always had a free 
roadway to one another, and though sometimes a tree 
has fallen across the road, yet we have still removed 
it again and kept the path clear, and we design to 
continue the old friendship that has been between 
us and you." Fletcher promised to protect the Del- 
awares from the Senecas and Onondagas, and told 
them it was to their interest to remain quiet and at 
peace. When the Legislature met (May 22, 1694), 
Fletcher, who had just returned from Albany, tried 
his best to get a vote of men and money, or either, 
for defensive purposes. He even suggested that they 
could quiet their scruples by raising money simply to 
feed the hungry and clothe the naked, but this round- 
about way did not commend itself to Quaker sim- 
plicity and straightforwardness. A tax of a penny 
per pound was laid to compensate Thomas Lloyd 
and William Markham for their past services, the 
surplus to constitute a fund to be disbursed by Gov- 
ernor and Council, but an account of the way it 
went was to be submitted to the next General As- 
sembly. Further than this the Assembly would not 
go. Fletcher wanted the money to be presented to the 
king, to be appropriated as he chose for the aid of 
New York and the defense of Albany. He objected 
likewise to the Assembly naming tax-collectors in 
the act, but the Assembly asserted its undoubted 
right to control the disposition of money raised by 
taxation, and thereupon the Governor dissolved it. 



126 



HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA. 



In June, 1695, after Markham was well settled in 
his place as Penn's Deputy Governor, there were again 
wild rumors of French designs upon the colonies and 
of squadrons already at sea to assail them, and this 
was so far credited thata watch and lookout station was 
maintained for several months at Cape Henlopen. 
In the latter part of this same month Markham in- 
formed the Council that Governor Fletcher had made a 
requisition upon him for ninety-one men and officers, or 
the funds for maintaining that number for the defense 
of New York. This matter was pressed by Fletcher, 
but the Council decided that it was too weighty a 
business to be transacted without consulting the Gen- 
eral Assembly, which would not meet before the second 
week of September. Markham suggested an earlier 
day for meeting, but the Council thought the secur- 
ing of the crops a more important business than any 
proposition that the ex-captain-general had to lay 
before them. When the Assembly did meet in Sep- 
tember, it at once revealed the cause of the continual 
discontents which had vexed the province, and gave 
Deputy Governor Markham the opportunity to prove 
that he was an honest man. It voted a tax of a 
penny per pound and six shillings per capita (from 
which probably £]500 would have been realized), 
proposing out of the receipts from the levy to pay 
Markham £300, contribute £250 towards the main- 
tenance of government, and assign the surplusage 
to the payment of debts of the government. But the 
members accompanied this bill with another, a new 
act of settlement, in which the Assembly secured to 
itself the privileges which they had sought to obtain 
from Penn in vain. It was, as has justly been re- 
marked, 1 a species of " log-rolling." It had long been 
practiced with success by Parliament upon the impe- 
cunious monarchs of England, and in these modern 
times has been reduced to a science by nearly all legis- 
lative bodies. Markham, however, refused the bait. 
He declined to give his assent to both bills ; the Assem- 
bly refused to divorce them, and the Deputy Governor, 
in imitation of Fletcher's summary method, at once 
dissolved them in the very teeth of the charter he was 
refusing to supersede. Had they not been dissolved 
it is possible the General Assembly might have acted 
upon a petition in Markham's hands, which set forth 
some of the chief grievances of the citizens of Phila- 
delphia in thatday. They entreated that the persons 
put in office should be men " of good repute and 
Christian conversation, without respect to any pro- 
fession or persuasion in religion ;" that officers' fees 
be made public, and put up in every office for general 
inspection ; " that theyr is now many ordinaries and 
tipling houses in this town of Philidelfia Kept by 
several as are not well qualified for such undertak- 
ings, tending to debauchery and corrupting of youth." 
Wherefore it is begged that none but sober, honest, 
conscientious persons be allowed to keep such houses; 

i Westcott'a History of Philadelphia, chapter xl. 



that all the laws of the province be diligently enforced 
as the charter meant them to be ; that some place, 
as stocks, or cage, be provided for the incarceration of 
" drunkards or other violators of the good laws of Eng- 
land and this province," when taken up by the watch 
or constables, so as to escape the need of sending them 
to prison for such misdemeanors, thus adding to the 
public expenses; "also that sum cours may bee 
taken that these Indians may bee brought to more 
sobriety, and not to go reeling and bauling on the 
streets, especially by night, to the disturbance of the 
peace of this town ;" that the town crier be required to 
publish sales by auction of every sort of produce to 
the extent of each street, so as every inhabitant may 
have the benefit of such sales or the knowledge that 
they are to come off; " and also that theyr may bee 
a check put to hors raceing, which begets swearing, 
blaspheming God's holy name, drawing youth to 
vanaty, makeing such noises and public hooting and 
uncivil riding on the streets; also that dancing, fid- 
ling, gameing, and what else may tend to debauch 
the inhabitanc and to blemish Christianity and dis- 
honour the holy name of God, may be curbed and 
restrained, both at fairs and all other times." This 
memorial was signed by many leading citizens, such 
as Edward Shippen, Robert Ewer, R. Ward, Howell 
Griffith, Humphrey Murray, Casper Hoodt, William 
Carter, Isaac Norris, Thomas Ffitzwalter, Evan Grif- 
fith, Joseph White, Thomas Wharton, James Fox, etc. 
After Markham's first failure to walk in Fletcher's 
footsteps, he appears to have dispensed with both 
Council and Assembly for an entire year, governing 
the province as suited himself, with the aid of some 
few letters from Penn, made more infrequent by the 
war with France. On the 25th of September, 1696, 
however, he summoned a new Council, Philadelphia 
being represented in it by Edward Shippen, Anthony 
Morris, David Lloyd, and Patrick Robinson, the latter 
being secretary. The home government, through a 
letter from Queen Mary (the king being on the conti- 
nent), it appeared, complained of the province for 
violating the laws regulating trade and plantations 
(probably in dealing with the West Indies). The 
Council advised the Governor to send out writs of 
election and convene a new Assembly oh the 26th 
of October. He complied, and Philadelphia elected 
Samuel Carpenter, Samuel Richardson, James Fox, 
and Nicholas Wain to be her representatives. As soon 
as the Assembly met a contest began with the Governor. 
Markham urged that the queen's letter should be at- 
tended to, asking for supplies for defense, and also called 
their attention to William Penn's pledge that, when 
he regained his government, the interests of England 
should not be neglected. The Assembly replied with 
a remonstrance against the Governor's speech, and a 
petition for the restoration of the provincial charter 
as it was before the government was committed to 
Governor Fletcher's trust. That Governor was still 
asking for money and relief, and Markham entreated 



RAPID GROWTH OF THE CITY. 



127 



that a tax might be levied, and, if consciences needed 
to be quieted in the matter, the money could be ap- 
propriated for the purchase of food and raiment for 
those nations of Indians that had lately suffered so 
much by the French. This proposition became the 
basis of a compromise, the Assembly agreeing to vote 
a tax of one penny per pound, provided the Governor 
convened a new Assembly, with a full number of 
representatives according to the old charter, to meet 
March 10, 1697, to serve in Provincial Council and 
Assembly, according to charter, until the lord pro- 
prietary's pleasure could be known about the matter; 
if he disapproved, the act was to be void. Markham 
yielded, his Council drew up the supply bill and a 
new charter or frame of government, and both bills 
became laws'. 

Markham's new Constitution, adopted Nov. 7, 1696, 
was couched upon the proposition that " the former 
frame of government, modeled by act of settlement 
and charter of liberties, is not deemed in all respects 
suitably accommodated to our present circumstances.'' 
The Council was to consist of two representatives from 
each county, the Assembly of four; elections to take 
place on the 10th of March each year, and the Gen- 
eral Assembly to meet on the 10th of May each year. 
The Markham charter goes into details in regard to 
the oaths or affirmations of officials of all classes, 
jurors, witnesses, etc. ; it sets the pay of Councilmen 
and members of Assembly, and is on the whole a 
clearer and more satisfactory frame of government 
than the one which it superseded, while not varying 
in many substantive features from that instrument. 
The Assembly secured at least one-half what the 
framers of the province had so long been fighting for, 
to wit: "That the representatives of the freemen, 
when met in Assembly, shall have power to prepare and 
propose to the Governor and Council all such bills as they 
or the major part of them shall at any time see needful to 
be passed into law vnthin the said province and territo- 
ries'' This was a great victory for the popular cause. 
Another equally important point gained was a clause 
declaring the General Assembly indissoluble for the 
time for which its members were elected, and giving 
it power to sit upon its own adjournments and com- 
mittees, and to continue its sessions in order to pro- 
pose and prepare bills, redress grievances, and impeach 
criminals. 

The imperial business on which Markham had 
called the Council together in 1696 was charges made 
to the Lords of Trade that the Philadelphians had 
not only harbored Avery, the pirate, but had syste- 
matically encouraged the extensive smuggling opera- 
tions conducted by the Scotch and the Dutch. After 
waiting in vain to hear from Markham, the Lords 
summoned Penn and laid the charges before him. 
The proprietary immediately (Sept. 5, 1697) wrote a 
sharp letter to Markham and the Council in regard to 
these charges, and also in regard to an anonymous 
letter he had received from Philadelphia, in which 



that town is set forth as a modern Sodom, "overrun 
with wickedness;'' "sins so very scandalous, openly 
committed in defiance of law and virtue, facts so foul 
that I am forbid by common modesty to relate them." 
A committee of Council was appointed to investigate 
the charges, by whom the piracy matter was explained, 
the contraband trade denied, and as for looseness and 
vice, they were admitted to have increased with the 
city's growth, but the magistracy ought not to be im- 
peached for that, since they did their duty. However, 
it was admitted that public-houses were too numerous, 
and that vicious habits were increased on that account. 
A proclamation was issued covering the substance of 
the report and enjoining greater diligence upon mag- 
istrates in the suppression of vice. The lookout at 
Cape Henlopen was again stationed, and Markham, 
hearing of a French privateer on the coast, equipped 
and sent an armed vessel to take her. The British 
government took an effectual way to prevent the 
Philadelphians from renewing their connection with 
either pirates or smugglers by strengthening the power 
of the Admiralty Court. The judge of this court, 
Quarry, with Attorney-General Randolph, and an 
informer named Snead, gave Markham and his gov- 
ernment no end of trouble and annoyance. Quarry 
and Randolph were particularly hostile to the Society 
of Friends, and wished to induce the English govern- 
ment to take Penn's charter away from him. They 
believed, or affected to do so, that Markham was ac- 
tually in league with the pirates. Their accusations 
were the more serious from the fact that Capt. Kidd's 
crew had just been disbanded in New York and many 
of them had come to the Delaware. The judges of 
the Provincial Court came in collision with Quarry 
and were forced to resign. Randolph aggravated 
Markham to such a degree that finally the Deputy 
Governor seized the crown's attorney, sent him to 
prison and had him locked up. 

We reproduce on the following page, from John Blair 
Linn's learned and satisfactory treatise on "The Duke 
of York's Laws," fac-similes of the autographs of Gov- 
ernors, Deputy Governors, presidents of Council, as- 
sistants in the government, and Speakers of Assembly 
from 1682 to the time of Penn's return and resumption 
of authority in his province. These signatures have a 
force and character of their own such as would seem 
to become the autographs of leading men. They in- 
clude William Penn, proprietary and Governor, 1681- 
93, 1695-1718. William Markham, Deputy Governor 
of the province, 1681-82, 1695-99; of lower counties, 
1691-93 ; Lieutenant-Governor of province, 1693-95. 
Thomas Lloyd, president of Council, 1684-88, 1690- 
91 ; president of governmental commission, 1688 (Feb- 
ruary to December) ; Deputy Governor of province, 
1691-93. John Blackwell, Deputy Governor, 1688- 
90. John Goodson, Samuel Carpenter, assistants in 
government, 1695-96. Speakers of Assembly : Thomas 
Wynne, 1683 ; Nicholas More, 1684 (it is not certain 
that More was Speaker of the first Assembly of 1682) ; 



128 



HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA. 



Arthur Cooke, 1689; Joseph Growdon, 1690-93; Wil- 1697, 1699, 1700; Phinehas Pemberton, 1698. All 
Ham Clarke, 1692 ; David Lloyd, 1694 ; Edward Ship- these are reproduced from authentic documents in the 
pen, 1695 ; John Simcocke, 1696 ; John Blunston, | archives of the State. 




M& 



<s^v 




L7«#W 







LOfr-y 



<9r^ 



-^ / :^fe^r / 








There is not much more to say about the history 
of this period. The Colonial Records furnish a 
barren tale of new roads petitioned for and laid out ; 
fires, and precautions taken against them and prep- 
arations to meet them; tax-bills, etc. William Penn 
sailed from Cowes on Sept. 9, 1699, for his province. 
He had arranged his English affairs; he brought his 
second wife and his daughter and infants with him ; 
probably he expected this time at least to remain in 



the province for good and all. He reached Phila- 
delphia December 3d, and took lodgings wilh Edward 
Shippen. The city of his love was quiet, sad, gloomy. 
It was just beginning to react after having been 
frightfully ravaged by an epidemic of yellow fever, 
attended with great mortality, and the people who 
survived were sober and quiet enough to suit the 
tastes of the most exacting Quaker. 



MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE SETTLERS. 



129 



CHAPTER XL 

MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE PRIMITIVE 
SETTLERS. 

" So twice five miles of fertile ground 
With wnlls and towers were girdled round; 
And here were gardens bright with sinuous rills, 
Where blossomM many an incense-hearing tree ; 
And here were forests, ancient as the hillB, 
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery." 

Coleridge. 

It was the boast of the Emperor Augustus, in re- 
gard to Rome, that " Marmoream se relinquere, quam 
lateritiam accepisset." When Perm came to Philadel- 
phia with his colony of first purchasers he found a 
forest, with thickets and swamps, lying between two 
rivers, the sole population some scanty bands of sav- 
ages, with here and there a hut or cabin, with a few 
acres about it of cleared land, marking the habitation 
of some pioneer of the white race. When the Lord 
Proprietary returned to Philadelphia on his second 
visit, in 1699, he found a province of ten thousand 
people and a city of seven hundred houses, 1 well 
laid off with streets, squares, wharves, market, 
churches, prison, etc., well governed, having an es- 
tablished foreign and domestic trade, and some sub- 
stantial foundations laid for manufactures. No won- 
der Penn looked at his work with hearty enjoyment, 
as he wrote, in one of his last letters to the colony, 
" It was no small satisfaction to me that I have not 
been disappointed in seeing them prosper and grow- 
ing up to a flourishing country, blessed with liberty, 
ease, and plenty, beyond what many of themselves 
could expect, and wanting nothing to make them- 
selves happy but what, with a right temper of mind 
and prudent conduct, they might give themselves." 2 

The political history of this country, prospering 
and growing up in a flourishing way, blessed with 
liberty, ease, and plenty, would not be complete if 
we did not pause here, at the beginning of a new 
century, and when the banks of the Delaware had 
been more or less occupied by Europeans for nearly 
two generations, to give something like a picture of 
the social and domestic life of the early settlers, the 
pioneers among those hardy pale-faces before whose 
advance the natives of the soil melted away and dis- 
appeared. 

Gabriel Thomas, "A Historical Description of Pennsylvania," etc., 
1697-98, says "two thousand houses, all inhabited," an obvious ex- 
aggeration. There were less than three thousand houses in 1749. The 
authority for the number of houses is Dr. James Mease's "Picture of 
Philadelphia," 1S11. He gives tho returns as follows: 1G83, houses, 80; 
17U0, houses, 700; 1749, houses, 207G; 1769, houses, 4474, etc. The esti- 
mates of 1700 and 1749, however, were simply for Philadelphia proper. 
If we suppose that Thomas estimated, as later calculators did, so as to 
include Northern Liberties, Wicaco (Southwark), Passayunk, and Moy- 
amensing, the seven hundred would (on the basis of later proportions) 
be only thirty -nine per cent, of the whole, and adding Kensington 
(Shacltamaxon) we should easily have from eighteen hundred to two 
thousand houses. 

2 Penn's expostulatory letter to Edward Shippen and "Old Friends," 
29th June, 1710. 

9 



There is no distinct, positive evidence of permanent 
Indian villages anywhere upon the ground within the 
present limits ofPhiladelphia since the first white man 
explored the Delaware. The presence of the com- 
monly found Indian relics at several places, as, for 
instance, at or near the mouth of the Pennepacka 
Creek, would indicate that villages had stood there 
at some period or other, but perhaps not within the 
time since white settlers began to come thither. The 
Minquas and the Delaware Indians, hunters and fish- 
ers, had still their permanent homes, with corn-fields 
and patches for beans, squashes, and melons. Their 
stockades were always hard by more or less of cleared 
land, as was the case with the Nanticoke villages in 
the Delaware peninsula, the Susquehannas at the 
mouth of Octorara Creek, and the Senecas and 
associated tribes dwelling between the Mohawk and 
the Allegheny Rivers. But the Delawares who occu- 
pied the site of Philadelphia, and the other tribes who 
visited them there must have been, from the necessity 
of the case, forest Indians, fishers, hunters, and trap- 
pers of the beaver, the otter, and the muskrat. No 
fact is better established than that the ground on 
which Philadelphia now stands was closely occupied 
when the white men first saw it, and until Penn's 
colonists came in, with a continuous growth of the 
primeval forests, except where swamp and marsh and 
the daily flow of the tide prevented the trees from 
growing. Capt. Cornells Hendrickson, of Munnickhuy- 
sen, in his report of August, 1616, to the States Gen- 
eral of Holland, says of the country explored by him 
along the Delaware, " He hath found the said coun- 
try full of trees, to wit, oak, hickories, and pines, 
which trees were in some places covered with vines. 
He hath seen in said country bucks and does, turkeys 
and partridges," inhabitants of the great woods. The 
Swedes and the Dutch both of them found it easier 
work to plant on the sandy plains and clear up the 
scrub pine thickets of the lower Delaware counties, 
or to dyke and reclaim the rich alluvial flats (valleys 
they called them) on the Brandywine and other kin- 
dred streams, than to attempt to cut down the enor- 
mous forest- trees that towered above the firm lands of 
Coaquannock. Capt. Markham, when he first reached 
Pennsylvania and the site of Philadelphia, reported 
back to his employer that "it is a very fine country, 
if it were not so overgrown with woods." But these 
woods had one advantage which the settlers ought to 
have appreciated. As is the case with the forest parts 
of Kentucky to-day, the deep, rich soil encouraged 
such an enormous girth and altitude of trees that 
there was little or no undergrowth, except where the 
swamps prevailed or the beavers had constructed their 
dams and felled a part of the trees. Hence the woods 
afforded the best sort of pasturage of good, sweet herb- 
age, on which all sorts of stock throve wonderfully. 
Traveling was not difficult in this sort of forest, and 
Capt. Markham notes that " We have very good 
horses and the men ride madly on them. Thev think 



130 



HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA. 



nothing of riding eighty miles a day, and when they j 
get to their journey's end, turn their horses into the 
field. They never shoe them." Penn, also, in a let- 
ter already quoted from, speaks with alarm of the ■ 
indiscriminate destruction of the forests around Phila- { 
delphia as tending to choke the country with under- 
growth and thickets, destroy pasturage, and encourage 
all sorts of vermin to multiply. And Acrelius 1 says 
that " when the Christians first came to the country 
the grass was up to the flanks of animals, and was 
good for pasture and hay-making ; but as soon as the 
country had been settled the grass has died out from 
the roots, so that scarcely anything but black earth is 
left in the forests. Back in the country, where the 
people have not yet settled, the same grass is found, 
and is called wild-rye." 

In these deep but not impenetrable, forests, these 
broad park-like expanses, with their profound shade 
from lofty trees and clambering vines, a few, but not 
many, Indians had their lodges or huts. The hunting 
and fishing were good; the deer came to the borders of 
all the small streams, and the surface of the waters 
was populous with dense flocks of wild-fowl, while 
their depths teemed with fishes of every size, from the 
sturgeon to the smallest pan-fish. The great oak- 
groves were favorite resorts of the wild pigeons, and 
there seems to have been a regular "pigeon-roost," or 
breeding-place for the gregarious bird (if we may 
accept the ordinary interpretation of such Indian 
names) at Moyamensing. 2 In the spring and early 
summer months, just after the Indians of the interior 
had planted their corn and beans, the Delaware and 
Schuylkill were filled with incalculably large shoals of 
the migratory fish, pressing towards fresh water in order 
to deposit their spawn, and pursued by schools of the 
predatory sea-fish. At these seasons the shores of the 
rivers were thronged with Indians and their lodges, 
while their canoes darted gayly over the surface, men, 
women, and children spearing or netting fish, and 
cleaning and drying them. The sturgeon, the por- 
poise, now and then the salmon, were all caught, 
with innumerable shad, herring, alewives and bream, 
pike and perch. In the autumn again the. Indians 
were drawn to the river-shore by the wild fowl which 
flew low near the waters. This was in the inter- 
val after the corn harvesting and the beginning of 
the winter hunting. Besides this, the site of Phila- 
delphia seems to have grown to be a familiar spot for 
councils and general conferences of the tribes. The 
Delawares, whether Heckewelder and the earlier stu- 
dents of Indian customs and traditions be right or 
not in conceiving this tribe to have been conquered 
and made " women" of by the fierce Iroquois, were 
on friendly terms with nearly all the other tribes. 



l History of New Sweden, chap. viii. 

2"Moyamensing signifies in unclean place, a dung-heap. At one 
time great flocks of pigeons had their roostin the forest and made the 
place unclean for the Indians, from whom it received its name"— 
Acrelivs. 



They, and perhaps the land which it was conceded 
they owned, were in some sort of fashion under a 
" taboo." Probably the fact of their controlling the 
fish and oyster grounds of the Hudson and the Dela- 
ware, and the Susquehanna also in part, had a good 
deal to do with this. At any rate, at the time the 
whites came to the Delaware, and for many years 
afterwards, Shackamaxon, Wicaco, and other places 
within the area of the present city of Philadelphia 
were " neutral ground," where representatives of all 
the tribes on fresh water and east of the Alleghanies, 
between the Potomac, the Hudson, and the lakes, — the 
Iroquois, the Nanticokes, the Susquehannocks, and the 
Shawanees, — were accustomed to kindle their council 
fires, smoke the pipe of deliberation, exchange the 
wampum belts of explanation and treaty, and drive 
hard bargains with one another for peltries, provision, 
and supplies of various kinds. The trails made by 
the savages in going to and from this point of union 
were deep and broad at the time of the Dutch and 
Swedes, and were as far as convenient made available 
by the Europeans. But the Indian trails lay in di- 
rections best suited for their own convenience in 
going from their lodges to the rivers; whereas the 
white men's roads were between their own settle- 
ments. The Senecas and Oneida Indians used the 
waterways, descending the Susquehanna and Dela- 
ware in their light birches, and then, excepting a few- 
portages, traversing the whole distance from their 
castles to Shackamaxon along the network of streams 
which make their way down from the great water- 
shed of Western New York. 

The first white settlers upon the site of Philadel- 
phia, as has already been shown in the preceding 
chapters, and the only white settlers previous to the 
coming of Penn who made any distinct and durable 
impress upon the country, were the Swedes. Their 
first, second, and third colonies, which arrived out in 
1638 and 1640, and the fifth colony also, which came 
between those of Printz and Bisingh, contained a 
good many Dutch, and were indeed partly recruited 
and fitted out in the Netherlands, with Dutch capital 
and under Dutch management. The first expedition 
was commanded by Minuet, a Dutchman, and Sparl- 
ing and Blommaert, the leading spirits in its manage- 
ment, were Dutchmen. So with the expedition of 
Hollandaer. 3 

It is also the fact that the Dutch sent parties fre- 
quently to the Zuydt River to settle and plant, as well 
as to trade with the Indians, and that Stuy vesant, after 
the recapture of Fort Casimir, the overthrow of Ki- 
singh's government and the subjugation of New 
Sweden, sent many of his people to the south side 
of Delaware to settle the country. For all that the 
Swedes were the first permanent colonists. The 



a See Prof. Odhner's Founding of Now Sweden, Pennsylvania Magazine, 
yol. ii., where much new light is thrown on the ohscure annals of these 
early settlements. 



MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE SETTLERS. 



13J 



Dutch were adventurers, fond of trading and naviga- 
tion. As a rule they did not bring their families to 
the Delaware with them, and they could easily reach 
their own countrymen in New York after English 
rule had been established by Lovelace, and the trade 
in furs and peltries was no longer profitable so low 
down on the Delaware. The Swedes and Finns, on 
the other hand, had no such migratory propensity. 
They were like trees, and grew in the soil to which 
they had been transplanted, as if they had never 
known any other. As a rule they had not emigrated 
from their native country from choice, but were 
transplanted by force. One reason, indeed, why the 
Dutch partners had been invited to co-operate with 
the Swedish West India Company was that emigrants 
and volunteers to the new country were so hard to 
procure. When the project of the Swedish colony was 
first thrown out by TJsselincx, and adroitly fostered by 
his able and ingenious pen in the various contribu- 
tions to the Argonautiea Gustaviana, the leading 
people in Scandinavia were full of the scheme and 
subscribed eagerly. The colony was to be a refuge 
for liberty and Protestantism ; no slavery, no tyranny 
were to be tolerated there, and the widows and or- 
phans made desolate by the Thirty Years' war were 
to find there new homes and cheap and certain means 
of livelihood. But this fever died out long before 
1637. 

The Swedish and Finnish peasants had very strong 
local attachments. They did not wish to abandon 
their native soil, in spite of the scanty livelihood 
it insured them. The "Kalmar Nyckel" and the 
" Gripen" were delayed a long time in getting their 
passengers for the first voyage under Minuet. It is 
not certainly known that of this party with Minuet, 
more than one person — Lieut. Moens Kling — was a 
Swede. Anders Svensson Bonde, Peter Gunnarsson 
Rambo, Per Andersson, Anders Larsson Daalbo, Sven 
Larsson, Sven Gunnarsson, his son, Sven Svenson, 
Lars Svensson Kackin, Moens Andersson, Iven Thors- 
son, and Marten Gottersson were all of them certainly 
in New Sweden in 1640, 1 but it cannot be shown 
whether they came over with Minuet or with his 
successor, Hollandaer. As Prof. Odhner shows by the 
record, "the people entertained a repugnance to the 
long sea-voyage to the remote and heathen land. It 
is affirmed in the letters of the administration to the 
Governors of the provinces of Elfsborg and Varm- 
land, that no one spontaneously offered to accompany 
Capt. Van Vliet (who was originally appointed to 
command the ship that bore Hollandaer's party, but 
was superseded before sailing by Capt. Powel Jansen). 
The government ordered these officers, therefore, to 
lay hands on such married soldiers as had either 
evaded service or committed some other offense, and 
transport them, with their wives and children, to 



1 Rulle der Volcker t \n Royal Archives of Sweden, quoted by translator 
of Prof. Odhner's article in Penna. Magazine. 



New Sweden, with the promise to bring them home 
again within two years, — to do this, however, 'justly 
and discreetly,' that no riot might ensue.'' In 1640 
again the Governor of the province of Orebro was 
ordered to prevail upon the unsettled Finns to betake 
themselves, with their wives and children, to New 
Sweden. Lieut. Moens Kling, who was now back in 
Sweden, was sent to recruit for emigrants in the 
mining regions of Westmanland and Dalarne. He 
was also particularly instructed to enlist the "roam- 
ing Finns," who were tramps, or squatters living rent 
free in the forests. Next year, when Printz had re- 
ceived his commission, he was sent to hunt up the 
same class of persons, the Governors of Dal and 
Varmland receiving orders to capture and imprison, 
provided they could not give security or would not 
go to America, the "forest-destroying Finns," who, 
as described in a. royal mandate, " against our edict 
and proclamation, destroy the forests by setting tracts 
of wood on fire, in order to sow in the ashes, and who 
maliciously fell trees." A trooper in the Province of 
Skaraborg, who had broken into the cloister garden 
of the royal monastery at Varnhem, in Westergoth- 
land, and committed the "heinous crime of cutting 
down six apple-trees and two cherry-trees, was given 
the option of emigrating or being hung. The " Char- 
itas," which sailed in 1641 for New Sweden, had four 
criminals in a total of thirty-two passengers, the 
greater number of the remainder being indentured 
servants and low persons. In fact, Lieut.-Col. 
Printz was himself a disgraced man, having been 
court-martialed and dismissed from the army for the 
dishonorable and cowardly capitulation of Chemnitz, 
of which he was commandant, so that his appoint- 
ment to the colony of New Sweden was in some sort 
a punishment and a banishment. 

But this very reluctance of the Swedes to emigrate 
made them the best of immigrants. They stayed in 
the place to which they had been removed, and be- 
came permanent fixtures in the new soil just as they 
had wished to be left in the old. They were quiet, 
orderly, decent, with no injurious vices, and in that 
kindly soil and climate the natural fruitfulness of 
their families was greatly increased. Acrelius, no- 
ticing this prolificness, says quaintly, " Joseph Cob- 
son, in Chester, twenty years ago, had the bless- 
ing to have his wife have twins, his cow two calves, 
and his ewe two lambs, all on one night in the month 
of March, All continued to live." And he gives 
several other instances of the sort. Be this as it may, 
the Swedes remained on the spot through all the 
changes of administration as if adscript! glebce, and 
they multiplied so rapidly that when Carl Christo- 
pherson Springer wrote his letter (already quoted 
from) to Postmaster Thelin at Stockholm, in 16y3, 
only forty-five years after the first immigration, he 
was able to furnish " a roll of all the (Swedish) men, 
women and children which are found and still live in 
New Sweden, now called Pennsylvania, on the Dela- 



132 



HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA. 



ware River/' to the number of one hundred and 
eighty-eight families, nine hundred and forty-two 
persons. This does not include the Swedes on the 
other side of the Delaware, many families residing 
on the east bank being included in the list of " Tyd- 
able'' (taxable) persons returned to the Duke of 
York's Court at Upland, in November, 1677. 1 

1 It is perhaps expedient to give these lists, commencing with the one 
forwarded by Springer to Thelin. The names which are italicized in 
this list are such as likewise occur in the Upland list: 
Names. Number in family, 

Hindrick Anderson 5 

Johan Anderssen 9 

Johan Andersson 7 

Joran Andersen 5 

John Arum 6 

Joran Bagman 3 

Anders liengston 9 

Bengt Bengston 2 

Anders Boiide 11 

Julian Boiide 1 

Sven Bonds 5 

Lars Bure 8 

"William Cobb G 

Clirist wn Classen 7 

Jacob Classen 6 

Jacob Clemson 1 

Eric Cock 

Gabriel Cock 7 

Johan Cock 7 

Capl. Las&z Cock 11 

Moens Cock 8 

Otto Ernst Cock 5' 

Hindrick Collman 1 

Conrad Constantine 6 

Jolian von Culen 5 

Otto Dahlbo 7 

Peter Dalilbo 9 

Hindrick Danielsson 5 

Thomas Dennis 6 

Anders Diedricksson 1 

Olle Diedricksson 7 

Stephan Ekliorn 5 

Eric Ericsson 1 

Goran Ericsson 1 

Matte Ericsson 3 

Hindrick Faske 5 

Casper Fifth 10 

•Matthias do Foff. G 

Anders Frende 4 

Nils Frendes (widow) 7 

Olle Franssnn 7 

Eric Gii^teiibors 7 

Nils Giistenberg 3 

Eric Gbransson 2 

Brita. Gostafsson G 

Gostaf Giistaffison 8 

Hans GiJstafsson 7 



Jons Gostafsson 

Hans(Mocnp) Gostafsson 2 

Johan Grant rum 3 

Lara Hailing 1 

Moens Hall ton 9 

Israel Helm 5 

Johan Hindersson, Jr 3 

Anders Hindricksson 4 

David Hindricsson 7 

Jacob Hindrickson 5 

Johan Hindricksson 6 

Johan Hindricsson '. 5 

Matts Hollstcn 7 

Anders Homman 9 

Anders lloppmann 7 

Frederick lloppmann 7 

Johan Hoppmann 7 

Nicolas lloppmann 5 

Hindrick Iwaisson 9 

Hindrick Jacob 1 

Matts Jacob 1 

Hindrick Jacnbson 4 

Peter Joccom 9 

Diedrick Johansson 5 

Lars Johansson 6 

Simon Johansson 10 

Anders Jonson 4 

Jon Jonson 2 

Moens Jonson 3 

Nils JoiiBon 6 

Thomas JonBon 1 

Chrisiiern Joransson 1 

Hans Joransson H 

Joran Joransson 1 

Stephen Joransson & 

Lasse Kempe 6 

Frederick Kiinig 6 



Names, Number in family. 

Marten Knutsson 6 

Olle Kuckow 6 

Hans KyvCs (widow) 5 

Jonas Kyn 8 

Matts Kyn 3 

Nils Laican 5 

And. Persson Longaker 7 

Hindrick Larsson 6 

Lars Larsson 7 

Lars Larsson 1 

Anders Lock 1 

Moens Lock 1 

Antonij Long 3 

Robert Longhorn 4 

Hans Lucasson 1 

Lucas Lucasson 1 

Peter Lucasson 1 

Johan Mdnsson 5 

Peter Miinsson 3 

Marten M'drtensson, Jr 10' 

Marten Miirtensson, Sr 3 

Mats Martenson 4 

Johan Matron 11 

Nils Malison 3 

Christopher Meyer 7 

Paul Mink 5 

Eric Molica 8 

Anders Nilsson 3 

Jonas Nilsson 4 

Michael Nilsson H 

Hans Olsson 5 

Johan Ommersson 5 

LorentzOstersson 2 

Hindrick Pare hen 4 

Bengst Paulsson 5 

Gostaf Paulsson G 

Olle Paulsson 9 

Peter Palson 5 

Lars Pehrsson 1 

Olle Pehrsson 6 

Brita Petersson 8 

Carl Petersson 5 

Hans Petersson 7 

Lars Petersson 1 

Paul Petersson 3 

Peter Petersson 3 

Peter Stake (alius Petersson).... 3 

Reivier Peterson 2 

Anders Jtambo 9 

Gunnar Rambo G 

Jolian liambo G 

Peter Rambo, Sr 2 

Peter Rambo, Jr 6 

Mats Repott 3 

Nils Repott 3 

Olle Resse 5 

Anders Robertson 3 

Paul Sahlunge 3 

Isaac Savoy 7 

Johan Schrage 6 

Johan Scnte 4 

Anders Seneca 5 

Broor Seneca 7 

Jonas Scagge'n (widow) G 

Jolian Skrika 1 

Matts Skrika 3 

Hindrick Slobey 2 

Carl Springer 5 

Moens Staake 1 

Christian Stalcop 3 

Johan Sialcop 6 

Peter Stalcop 6 

Israel Stark G 

Matts Stark 1 

Adam Stedliam 3 

ABUiuiid Stedham 8 

Benjamin Stedliam 5 

Lucas Stedham 7 

Lyoff Stedham 9 

Johann Stilt e 8 

Johatin Stillmau 5 

Jonas Stillniiin 4 

Peter Stillmau 4 

OlleStobey 3 



The Swedes on the Delaware have sometimes been 
reproached as a lazy people because they did not clear 
the forests at a rapid rate, nor build themselves fine 
houses. But this is not the character which Penn 
gives them, nor that to which their performances en- 
title them. Penn says, "They are a plain, strong, 
industrious people, yet have made no great progress 



Names. Number in family. 

Gunnar Svenson 5 

Johan Svenson 9 

William Talley. 7 

Elias Tay 4 

Christiern Thomas' 1 (widow) G 

Olle Thomasxon 9 

Olle Thomson 4 

Hindrick 'fossa 5 

Jolian Tossa 4 

Lars Tossa 1 

Matt* Tos«a 1 

Cornelius Van der Weer 7 

Jacob Van der Weer 7 

Jacob Van der Weer 3 

William Van der Weer 1 

Jesper Wallraven 7 

Jonas Wall raven 1 

Anders Weinom 4 

Anders Wihler 4 

II. 

Listof those still living who were 
horn in Sweden: 

Petrr Rambo, | Fifty-four years in 
Anders Bonds, J New Sweden, 
Awlem Beugtsson. 
Sven Svenson. 
Michael Nihson. 
Moens Staake. 
Marten Martensson, Sr. 



Carl Xtopher Springer. 
Hindrick Jacobson. 
Jacob Clemsson. 
Olof Rosse. 
Hindrick Andersson. 
Hindrick Iwarsson. 
Simon Johansseu. 
Paul Mink. 
Olof Paulsson. 
Olof Pi-tersson. 
Marten Martenson, Jr. 
Eric Mullica. 
Nils Mattson. 
Antony Long. 
Israel Helm. 
Anders Heman. 
Olle Dedricksson. 
Hans Petersson. 
Hindrick Collman. 
Jons Gostafsson. 
Moens Hallton. 
Hans Olofsson. 
Anders Seneca. 
Brcor Seneca. 
Eskil Anderson. 
Matts de Voss. 
Johan Hindricksson. 
Anders Weinom. 
Stephan .Joransson. 
Olof Kinkovo. 
Anders Didricksson. 
Anders Mink. 



Names of Taxdbles not included in above List. 



Oele Neelson and 2 sons 

Hans MoenB 

Eric Poulsen 

Hans Jurja.ii 

Michill Fredericks 

Justa Daniels and serv* 

Hendrick Jacobs (upon y e 

Island) 

Andreas Swen and father 

Oele Swansen and Bert 

Swen Lorn 

OeleStille 

Dunck Williams 

The*. Jacob* 

Matthias Clausen 

Jan Claasen and 2 sons 

Frank Walcker 

Peter Matnon 

Jan Boelson 

Jiiii Schoeten 

Jau Justa and 2 sous 

Peter Andreas and son 

Lace Dalho 

Rich* Duckett 

Mr. Jones y° hatter 



Harmen Ennis 

Pelle Ericssen 

Benck Saling 

Andries Saling 

Harmen Jansen 

Hendrick Hoi man 

Bertell Laersen 

Hendrick Tade 

Andrifs Bertelsen 

Jan Bertelsen 

Jan Cornelissen and son 

Lace Mortens 

Antony Matson 

Claes Schram 

Robert Waede 

Neele Laersen and sons 

Will Orian 

Knoet Mortensen 

Oele Coeckoe 

Carell Jansen 

Rich. Fredericx 

Jurian Hertsveder 

Juns Justasse 

Hans Ho f man and 2 sons 3 

Pou 11 Corvorn 1 



" Hereditary surnames," says Mr. Edward Armstrong (quoting M. A. 
Lower, on English Surnames), "are said to have been unknown in Sweden 
before tho fourteenth century. A much later date must be assigned 
as the period when they became permanent, for surnames were not in 
every case established among the Swedes in Pennsylvania until some 
time after the arrival of Penn, when intermarriage, and the more rigid 
usage of the English, compelled them to adhere to the last combination; 
as for example with respect to the name of Olla Paul-son, the 'son 1 be- 
came permanently affixed to tho name, and ceased to distinguish the de- 
gree of relationship." This, however, is not singular with the Scandi- 
navian peuple, Mr. Armstrong should have observed. It has prevailed in 
all countries down to a late period, and especially among the English 
races, where the corruption of surnames is still going on. No bad spell- 
ing can do more harm than bad pronouncing, nor ii it worse to turn 
Lorenz, Lacrs, Larse into Lasse (just as common people nowadays pro- 
nounce arsenal as if it were spelt asscnal) than to corrupt Esterling into 
Stradling, Majoribanks into Marchbanks, Pierce into Purse, Taliaferro 
into Toliver, En rough ty into Doughty, etc. The Swedish system, how- 
ever, is a little complicated, and made much more so by the loose spell- 
ing of contemporary chroniclers and clerks. Some instances of tho trans- 
mutations of names may help the reader to enlighten himself about these 



MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE SETTLERS. 



133 



in the culture or propagation of fruit-trees, as if they 
desired to have enough, not a superfluity." He speaks 
also of their respect to authority, adding, "As they 
are a people proper and strong of body, so they have 
fine children, and almost every house full ; rare to find 
one of them without three or four boys and as many 
girls; some six, seven, and eight sons. And I must 
do them that right, I see few men more sober and in- 
dustrious." In speaking of their lack of diversified 
husbandry, Penn forgot that their leading crop was 
tobacco, which, being without slaves almost entirely, 
they had to cultivate with their own hands. Their 
intelligence must have been at least equal to their 
loyalty, for they were more than fully represented, on 
the basis of comparative population, in all the early 
assemblies, councils, and magistrates' courts, under 
Lovelace and Penn, and they were the only interpre- 
ters Penn could get in his intercourse with the In- 
dians. They were not devoid, moreover, of what 
would nowadays be esteemed remarkable industrial 
enterprise. There can be no doubt that the Swedes 
— probably those "wandering Finns" from the Swe- 
dish iron ore regions — discovered and worked the ore 
banks of Cecil and Harford Counties, Md., long before 
George Talbot's manor of Susquehanna was patented 
or Principio Furnace thought of. The mill afterwards 
used by Talbot and to which all his tenants were com- 
pelled to bring their corn to be ground was originally 
started by the Swedes to .drive a rude bellows blast 
of their own. 
The Swedes, as emigrants from an exceedingly well 

lists. Eric Goranson is Eric, son of Goran (Jiirau), and Goran (Jiirau) 
Ericsson is Goran, eon of Eric, a grandson of Goran. Peter Petersen is 
Peter, son of Peter; Swensen was originally Swen. Nilson, or Keelson, 
may be found transposed to Jones, as in the case of the sou of Jonas Nil- 
son, styled Mouns (Moeus, Mans), Andrew, and Neils Jones. Sometinit'S 
the pnzzle is made worse by an alias, — e.g., Jans Justasse (alias Illack), 
and Pelle Laerson (alias Put Pelle). Changes in orthography have 
helped materially to cuufound names. Bengstsen becomes Baukson and 
Benson; Bocn, Bonde, becomes Bond and Boon; Swensen becomes 
Swanson and Swann ; Cock becotn es Cook and Cox ; Juccum, or Jookurn, 
becomes Yocum; Ivyn, or Kieu, becomes Keen; Mortense, Martens. 
The descendants of Lasse Cuck, son of Oele Cock, may be called either 
Allison or Willson. Many older Scandinavian names have been still 
more violently changed in their orthography in the course of the tritu- 
ration of centuries, or in their passage to another language more or less 
affiliated. Thus it is hard to detect, reading as we run, that Ulfstein is 
simply the Danish form of the Norwegian Vulfstan ; that in English, 
Haralld hinn Ilaifagra is Harold Fairfax: Rollo, Rolf, and Italph are 
the same. In the lists given above, Huling, or Hulling, becomes Full- 
ing; Giistafsson becomes Justis, Justice, or Justison; Kyn, Kean; Coin, 
Colen; Van Colen, Colli ns; Hnsselius, Issilis; Coleberg,Coleslinry; Deid- 
rickson, Derrickson ; Cock, Kock, etc. ; Hendrickson, Henderson; Mar- 
ten, Morton ; Iwsirson, Iverson and Ivison; Jonasson, Jones; Hopp- 
man, Hoffman; Wihler, Wheeler; Nilson, or Neelson, Neilson, or 
Nelson; Fisk is sometimes Fish; Bure, Buren or Burns; Collman, 
Coleman; Broor, Brewer : Anders, Andrews; Matt, Matthews; Do Voss, 
Vosc; Marte, Martin ; Slaake, Stark and Stack ; Iiosse, Rosser; Vaudcr 
Weer, Vaudiver; Pehrsson, Pierson and Pearson; Paulsson, Poulson ; 
Paul, Puwl-11; Olio, Will, William; Sahlung, Saling; Easse, Eaose, 
Raisin; Brita, Bridget; Gostaf, Gustavus; Knute, Knott; Lucasson, 
Lucas; Incoren, Inkhurn ; Onirnerson, Emerson ; Graiitruin, Grantham; 
Claasen, Clawsou ; Cabb, Cubb ; Oelssen, Wilson, etc. Lais and Laers 
become Lear; Laerson, Lawson ; Goron, Jb'ran, Jurien, and Julian; 
Bengst is Benedict, or Benjamin, or Bennett; Hailing is Hewling ; 
Senecka is Sinnickson ; Voorhees, Ferris. 



watered country, cut up in every direction by bays, 
sounds, rivers, lakes, and fiords, naturally followed 
the water-courses in the new country. They found a 
homelike something in the network of streams back 
of Tinnecum Island and thence to the Schuylkill, and 
in the rivers and meadows about Christiana Creek 
and the Brandywine. They clung to these localities 
tenaciously, and the only thing in Penn's government 
which roused their resentment and threatened to 
shake their loyalty was the attempted interference 
with their titles to these lands and the actual reduc- 
tion of their holdings by the proprietary and his 
agents. It is a fact that some of their tenures were 
very uncertain and precarious in the eyes of plain 
and definite English law, and probably the Quakers 
took advantage of this to acquire escheat titles to 
many very desirable pieces of land which the Swedes 
fancied to be indisputably their own. The purchasers 
of New Sweden from the Indians had vested the title 
to the entire tract bought in the Swedish crown, and 
this right of property was recognized and exercised 
by the crown; Two land grants from Queen Christina 
are on record in Upland Court, one to Lieut. Swen 
Schute, and Printz several' times solicited a grant to 
himself, which finally he obtained, giving the prop- 
erty to his daughter Armgart, Pappagoya's wife. 
The other land-holders secured their tracts in accord- 
ance with the fifth article of the queen's instructions 
to "the noble and well-born John Printz." In this 
article, after describing the bounds of the territory of 
New Sweden, and the terms of the contract under 
which it was acquired from "the wild inhabitants of 
the country, its rightful lords," it is laid down that 
this tract or district of country extends in length 
about thirty German miles, but in breadth and into 
the interior it is, in and by the contract, conditioned 
that " her Royal Majesty's subjects and the participants 
in this Company of navigators may hereafter occupy 
as much land as they may desire." The land thus 
bought in a single block and attached to the crown 
was originally managed by the Swedish West India 
Company. The revenue and public expenses were 
paid out of an excise on tobacco, and it was the in- 
terest of the company to have tobacco planted largely. 
In part this was accomplished by servants indentured 
to the company, who were sent over and paid regular 
wages by the month. 1 

1 Mans Kling, lieutenant and surveyor, received forty riksdaler per 
month ; lie commanded on the Schuylkill. Sundry adventurers, seeking 
experience, received free passuge out and maintenance, but no pay. 
Olof Persson Stille, millwright, received at start fifty daler, and to bo 
paid for whatever work he did for the company. Matts Hausson, gun- 
ner at the fort and tobacco-grower, on wages; Anders Ilansson, ser- 
vant of the company, to cultivate tobacco, received twenty riksdaler per 
year and a coat ; he served four years. Carl Jansson, book-keeper, seur 
with the expedition "for punishment," was afterwards favored by 
Printz, who gave him charge of the store-house at Tinnecum, paid him 
ten riksdaler a month wages, and recommended the home govern- 
ment to pardon him. Peter Larsson Cock, father of Lasse Cock, came 
out originally for punishment (ein gefangeiirr Jcnecht, a bond servant), re- 
ceiving his food and clothing and two dollars at the btart. He was free 



134 



HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA. 



In part the land was regularly conveyed to settlers 
who sought to better their fortunes; finally, criminals 
and malefactors were sent out to some extent at first 
to labor in chain-gangs upon the roads and public 
works. The land secured by settlers and servants 
who had worked out their term of years was granted 
in fee under power which came directly or indirectly 
from the crown. The difficulties about title which 
vexed the Swedes grew out of the changes in the 
tenure under the Swedish, Dutch, English, and later 
under Penn's grants, all of them having peculiar fea- 
tures of their own. It is important to understand 
these differences, which have not been clearly ex- 
plained by writers on the subject, some of whom 
have hastily concluded that the land tenure system in 
Pennsylvania originated with Penn's laws. So far as 
land is concerned, Penn's "great law" and the subse- 
quent enactments were all founded upon the "Duke 
of York's laws," the titles under which Penn was 
particular to quiet and secure. 1 



in four years, and became afterwards a judge of Upland Court. These 
indentured servants were not badly treated either by the Swedes or the 
Friends. Their usual term of service was four years, and they received 
a grant ofland, generally' fifty acres, at the expiration of the term. The 
system was originally contrived in Maryland in order to increase the 
labor of the province, and many of the bound servants were persons 
of good character but without means, who sold their services for four 
or five years in order to secure a passage across the ocean to the new 
laud of promise. A groat many of them went to Pennsylvania during 
Penn's n'nime and afterwards, both from Great Britain and the conti- 
nent of Europe. The terms upon which they were hired to the differ- 
ent colonies were nearly the same in every case. The following is about 
the form commonly used. It may be found in John Gilmary Shea'B in- 
troduction to Gowan's reprint of Alsop's "Character of the Province of 
Maryland,'' London, 1GGC: " The Forme of Binding a Servant. ' This in- 
denture, made the day of , in the yeare of our Soveraigne 

Lord King Charles &c*betweene • of the one party and of 

the other party, Witnesseth that the said doth hereby covenant, 

promise and grant to and with the said his Executors and As- 
signs, to serve him from the day of the date hereof, vntill his first and 

next arrivall in and after for and during the tearme of yeares, 

in such service and employment as the said or his assignes shall 

there employ him, according to the custome of the countrey in the 

like kind. In consideration whereof, the said doth promise and 

grant, to and with the said to pay for his passage and to find him 

with Meat, Drinke, Apparell and Lodging, with other necessaries during 
Ihe 6aid terinc; and at the end of the said terme, to give him one whole 
yeares provision of Come and fifty acres of Land, according to the order 

of the countrey. In witnesse whereof, the said hath hereunto put 

his hand and seale the day and yeere above written. 
"Sealed and delivered \ 
in the presence of J 




1 Penn, in fact, borrowed many other things from the duke's laws, 
particularly the much admired provision for "peacemakers," or arbitra- 
tors, to prevent litigation, which provision, by the way, became a dead 
letter within ten years after its enactment, and was dropped in Lieuten- 
ant-Governor Markham's Act of Settlement in 1696. This was much 
more actively enforced in the duke's IawB, which provide that "all 
actions of Debt or Trespasse under the value of five pounds between 
Neighbours shall be put to Arbitration of two indifferent persons of the 
Neighbourhood, to be nominated by the Constable of the place; And if 
either or both parties shall refuse (upon any pretence) their Arbitration, 
Then the next JuBtice of the peace, upon notice thereof by the Con- 
stable, shall choose three other indifferent persons, who are to meet at 
the Dissenter's charge from the first Arbitration, and both Plaintiff and 
Defendant are to be concluded by the award of the persons so chosen 
by the justice." 



The Swedes, both under Minuet's and later instruc- 
tions, were allowed to take up as much land as they 
could cultivate, avoiding land already improved and 
that reserved for the purposes of the Swedish West 
India Company. This land, so taken up, was to re- 
main to the possessors and their descendants "as 
allodial and hereditary property," including all ap- 
purtenances and privileges, as "fruit of the surface, 
minerals, springs, rivers, woods, forests, fish, chase, 
even of birds, the establishments upon water, wind- 
mills, and every advantage which they shall find es- 
tablished or may establish." The only conditions 
were allegiance to the Swedish crown and a payment 
of three florins per annum per family, 2 This form of 
quit-rent per family gave something of a communal 
aspect to the Swedish tenures, and it was probably 
the case that but few tracts were definitely bounded 
and surveyed in the earlier days of the settlement. 
Governor Printz received no special instructions in 
regard to land grants further than to encourage agri- 
culture and to use his discretion in all matters, 
guided by the laws, customs, and usages of Sweden. 
We may suppose he followed the colonial system 
which was already in operation. Governor Risingh's 
instructions from the Swedish General College of 
Commerce required him to give the same title and 
possession to those who purchased land from the 
savages as to those who bought from the company, 
with all allodial privileges and franchises, "but no 
one to enter into possession but by consent of the 
government, so that no one be deprived improperly 
of what he already possesses." The Swedish tenure, 
therefore, was by grant from the crown, through the 
Governor, the quit-rent being commuted into a capi- 
tation tax, payable annually by heads of families, the 
only limits to tracts granted being that they do not 
trespass on other holdings and are cultivated. After 
the conquest of New Sweden by the Dutch the 
Swedes were ordered to come in, take the oath of al- 
legiance, and have their land titles renewed. The 
Dutch were very liberal in their grants, especially 
under D'Hinoyossa, but the tenure of lands was en- 
tirely changed, and a quit-rent was now required to 
be paid of 12 stivers per morgen, equal to 3.6 cents 
per acre. 3 This was a high rent, in comparison with 
that which the Swedes had been paying, and with the 
rents charged by the English. Besides, the land had 
to be surveyed, and the cost of survey, record, and 
deeds for a tract of 200 or 300 acres was 500 or 600 
pounds of tobacco. Many Swedes were unwilling, 
some perhaps unable, to pay these fees and rents ; 
some abandoned their lands entirely, some sold, and 



2 See grant to Henry Hockhammer, etc., Hazard's Annals, i. 53. 
' 3 Writers have caused confusion in this matter by computing the 
■ stiver at 2 cents, and the guilder at 40 cents. The actual value of the 
; stiver, as settled by the Upland court at this time, was ^ths of a penny, 
I the guilder thus being worth 6 pence. In sterling values, therefore, the 

rent of an acre would have been 3.6 cents. In Pennsylvania currency, 
! which perhaps was the standard used in the Upland calculations, the 

rent would be 2 t\ cents per acre. 



MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE SETTLERS. 



135 



many paid no heed to the mandate, thus in fact eon- 
verting themselves into squatters. 

After the English took possession new oaths of 
allegiance and new confirmations of title were re- 
quired. Andross and Lovelace made patents very 
freely, doing all they could to promote and extend 
the settlements, but the Duke of York's laws exacted 
a quit-rent of one bushel of wheat per one hundred 
acres. Wheat, as we find by the Upland record, was 
taken for taxes (and of course for rent likewise) at 
the rate of "five guilders per scipple," — five guilders 
per scheepel or bushel, thirty pence sterling, or sixty 
cents, or thirty pence Pennsylvania currency, equal 
to forty-four and one-fifth cents, — a rent, therefore, of 
three-fifths or two-fifths of a cent per acre. Under 
Penn the regular quit-rents were a penny per acre, 
the conveyancing costing fourteen to eighteen shillings 
per plat, and the surveying and registering as much 
more, say thirty shillings, or seven dollars and fifty 
cents, initial payment, and two dollars annual pay- 
ment per one hundred acres. This was in addi- 
tion to the local tax for county and court expenses, 
amounting to thirty-five or forty guilders per tyd- 
able, — four dollars and fifty cents per family or 
per freeman, — and an occasional " war tax" of a 
penny in the pound on a valuation which, in 1694, 
reached £182,000 currency. There is no wonder that 
the Swedes, who had under their own rules paid only 
a. nominal rent, should have shrunk in fright at these 
heavy charges, and either gave up their land or 
neglected to take out deeds for it, and thus lost pos- 
session of it entirely under Peun's severe law of 1707. 
As Acrelius says, in his general statement of these 
changes of tenure, "Under the Swedish government 
no deeds were given for the land ; at least there are 
no signs of any, excepting those which were given as 
briefs by Queen Christina. 1 The Hollanders, indeed, 
made out quite a mass of deeds in 1656, but most of 
them were upon building lots at Sandhook. Mean- 
while, no rents were imposed. The land was un- 
cleared, the inhabitants lazy, so that the income was 
scarcely more than was necessary for their sustenance. 
But when the English administration came, all were 
-summoned to take out new deeds for their land in 
New York. ... A part took the deeds ; but others 
did not trouble themselves about them, but only 
agreed with the Indians for a piece of land for which 
they gave a gun, a kettle, a fur coat, or the like, and 
they sold them again to others for the same, for the 
land was superabundant, the inhabitants few, and 
the government not strict. . . . Many who took deeds 
upon large tracts of land were in great distress about 
their rents, which, however, were very light if peo- 
ple cultivated the lands, but heavy enough when 
they made no use of them ; and they therefore trans- 



l No deeds are found because the Dutch destroyed the Swedish local 
records, and they and the English required all deeds in the hands of 
Swedes to be surrendered in exchange for new deeds under the new 
government's seal. 



ferred the greater part of them to others, which their 
descendants now lament." 2 

Acrelius is not just to his fellow-countrymen in 
calling them idle. They were timid, and they lacked 
enterprise to enable them to grapple with the possi- 
bilities of the situation. They were simple peasants 
of a primitive race and a secluded country, thrown in 
among people of the two most energetic commercial 
and mercantile nations the world has ever seen. They 
were among strangers, who spoke strange tongues 
and had ways such as the Swedes could not under- 
stand. It is no wonder that they should have shrunk 
back, bewildered, and contented themselves with 
small farms in retired neighborhoods. But these 
small farms, after the Swedes settled down upon 
them, were well and laboriously tilled, and, small 
though they were, we have the acknowledgment of 
the Swedes themselves that they yielded a comfort- 
able support, with a goodly surplus each year besides 
to those large and rapidly increasing families which 
attracted William Penn's attention and commanded 
his admiration. 

The husbandry of the Swedes was homely, but it 
was thorough. The soil which they chiefly tilled 
was light and kindly. In the bottoms, swamps, and 
marshes along the streams, which the Swedes knew 
quite as well as the Dutch how to dyke and convert 
into meadows, — the Brandywine meadows are to this 
day famous as examples of reclaimed lands, — the soil 
was deep, rich, and very productive. The earlier 
Swedes did not sow the cultivated grasses on these 
meadows, they simply dyked them and mowed the 
natural grass, planting corn and tobacco, and sowing 
wheat wherever it was dry enough. , Acrelius speaks 
of the high price which these lands brought in his 
time — " six hundred dollars copper coin [sixty dol- 
lars] per acre" — when thoroughly ditched and re- 
claimed, though constantly liable to inundations from 
the tunneling of the muskrat and the crayfish. The 
Upland soils were excellently adapted to corn, wheat, 
and tobacco when they had been cleared. The forest 
growth on these soils comprised the several varieties 
of American oak familiar in the Middle States, the 
black-walnut, chestnut, hickory, poplar (tulip-tree), 
sassafras, cedar, maple, the gums, locust, dogwood, 
wild cherry, persimmon, button-wood, spice-wood, 
pine, alder, hazel, etc. The forests gave the Swedes 
much trouble, and undoubtedly had an influence 
upon the modes of cultivation employed. The cost 
of labor made it difficult to clear the thick woods. 9 



2 Acrelius, Hist. New Sweden, pp. 106-7. Penna. Hist. Society's edition, 
1874. 

3 Wages are always interesting to study, for their averages are evi- 
dences which cannot be contradicted of the condition of a people. The 
earlier servants in the employment of the Swedish company received, as 
a rule, twenty copper dollars (two dollars of our money) for outfit and 
twenty riksdtder wages per annum (equal to twelve dollars). The wages 
of freemen, however, were more than double this, and these wages more- 
over included board and lodgings. With wheat, at an average, fifty cents 
per bushel, a freeman's wages were equal to about sixty dollars a year at 



136 



HISTORY OP PHILADELPHIA. 



Hence the common expedient was resorted to of 
removing bushes and undergrowth only and girdling 
the larger trees, which were left to stand leafless and 
dead till they rotted and fell, when the logs were after 
a time " niggered up," or cut into lengths, rolled into 
piles, and burnt. It was difficult to plow between 
and among so many trunks and stumps, and this led 
the Swedes, in order further to economize labor, to 
resort to a system of husbandry which still, in a great 
measure, regulates the pitching and rotation of crops 
in the Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia peninsula. 
The ground was cleared in the winter, and then, un- 
less tobacco was grown, the " new ground," as it 
was called, was planted in corn in the spring. The 
process, which is known as "listing," was to throw 
two furrows or four furrows together, by plowing 
up and down the field instead of around it, leaving 
a series of ridges with an unplowed space between. 
The soil of the ridges was pulverized with the harrow 
and then stepped off into hills about four feet apart, 
the corn-planter dropping his five grains in each hill, 
scooping the hill out, dropping and covering with a 
heavy hoe, — a simple operation which experts dis- 
patched with two motions of the implement. At the 
last working of the corn, when it had grown stout 
and waist or breast high, the " middle" of the lists 
were plowed out and the fresh earth thrown about 
the roots of the vigorous plant. This " listing" pro- 
cess was found excellently well suited to the low, flat 
lands of the peninsula, as, besides saving labor, it 
afforded a sort of easy drainage, the bottom of every 
furrow being a small ditch, and this enabled the 

present values, besides keep. The Upland records show that just prior 
to Perm's occupancy •wages had sensibly bettered. In March, 17S0, 
Thomas Kerhy and Robberd Drawton, servants, sued Gilbert Wheeler 
for wages. Kerby wanted pay for seventy days, between October 7th 
and January 7th, "so much as is usuall to be given p r day, w cl) is fower 
(4) guilders p r diem w th costs. 11 The court allowed Kerby and Drawton 
eacli fifty stivers (two and a half guilders) per day, the latter to be paid 
"in Corneor other good pay in y° River." The four guilders was probably 
the "usuall" rate of summer wages, the award of the court represented 
fall and winter wages. "Come in y e river'* — that is, delivered where it 
could be shipped — was valued at three guilders per scipple (or bushel). 
The winter wages therefore were equivalent to thirty cents a day in mod- 
ern money, but in purchasing power rating corn at the average present 
price of fifty cents per bushel, amounted to forty-one and sixty-six hun- 
dredths cents per day, summer rates being actual for ty-eiglit cents, with 
a purchasing power of sixty-two cents. March 12, 1678, Israel Flelm 
bough J of Robberd Hutchinson, attorney for Ralph Hutchinson, "assignee 
of Daniel Juniper, of Accomac," "a Certayne man Servant named Wil- 
liam Bromfield,for y° ternie & space of four Jears [years] servitude now 
uext Ensuing. . . . The above named Servant, William Bromncld, being 
in Co rt , did promisse to serve the s d m r Israel helm faithfully & truly the 
aboves J terme of four Jears. The worpp 11 Co rt (upon ye Request of bjth 
partees concerned) Did order that w uh is above.said to bee so recorded." 
The price paid by Helm was "twelve huiidored Guilders. 1 ' This was 
equal to three hundred guilders per annum, and it show s how valuable 
labor was and how prosperous agriculture must have been at that day 
on the Delaware. Helm paid (and other court entries show he simply 
paid the average price for such labor) one hundred and fotty-four dollars 
in money (the present exchangeable value of which in corn is one hun- 
dred and ninety -two dollars) for four years 1 services of a man whom he 
had to board, lodge, clothe, care for when sick, and provide with an out- 
fit when free. At twenty years' purchase this would be nearly one 
thousand dollars for a servant for life. Farming must have been very 
profitable to enable such prices to be paid. 



farmers to plant their corn much earlier than they 
otherwise could have done. When the corn had gone 
through the " tasseling'' and " silking" processes and 
the ear was fully developed, the "blades" were pulled 
and the "tops" cut for fodder. In September the 
ground was lightly plowed with small shovel-plows 
(as yet the " cultivator" was not) and sowed in wheat, 
the stalks being broken down after frost with the hoe 
or by running rollers over them. Wheat thus sowed 
on ridges was so well protected by the drainage from 
frost and " winter-killing" that many farmers in the 
peninsula still throw their wheat-ground into corn- 
rows even where they use drills to sow it. Where 
wheat was not sowed on the corn-ground, and oats was 
not sowed in the spring, the stalk-field was summer- 
fallowed, being plowed in May, July, and again 
before seeding. The wheat was cut with sickles, 
bound in sheaves, and thrown into " dozens," each 
shock being expected to yield a bushel. Rye, wheat, 
and oats were thrashed with flails, and the former, 
sowed in November, was a favorite crop with the 
Swedes, the straw being sometimes shipped to Europe. 
Buckwheat was often sowed on the rye, wheat, or oats 
stubble, the grain being used to feed stock. Flax and 
oats were sowed in the spring, either on the corn- 
ground or stubble-fields. Potatoes were planted on 
the bare ground and covered with the listing-plow. 
Sweet potatoes, however, were planted in hills after 
the ground had been deeply furrowed. Turnips were 
not much sown, except on new ground, and tobacco, 
in Acrelius' time, was only planted on such tracts or 
in the gardens. 

The implements were few and rude, as were also 
the apparatus of the farm animals. The plows often 
had wooden mould-boards, and were not capable of 
working deeply ; the harrows were of the primitive 
triangular shape, and the oxen or horses working them 
were attached by means of double links to the apex 
of the V. The ox-yokes had bows made of bent 
hickory-wood, the horses' traces were of twisted deer- 
hide, and the collars of plaited corn-husks. The rest 
of the harness was home-made, of the same serviceable 
deer-skins, and the farmers and their lads, all fond of 
riding on horseback, were content with a bear- or a 
deer-skin girt about the horse, with a rawhide sur- 
cingle in lieu of a saddle, imitating the Indians in 
dispensing with stirrups. Beans, pumpkins, squashes, 
and melons were commonly planted in the hills with 
the corn. Much cabbage was produced, but the 
variety of other vegetables was limited to onions, 
peas, beets, parsnips, turnips, radishes, peppers, let- 
tuce, pepper-grass and scurvy-grass, with a few herbs, 
such as chamomile, sage, thyme, rue, sweet marjoram, 
lavender, savory, etc., to supply the domestic phar- 
macy, or afford seasoning for the sausages, liver-pud- 
dings, head-cheese, etc., which were made at " hog- 
killing." 

Penn, in his letter to the Free Society of Traders, 
speaks rather disparagingly of the orchards of the 



MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE SETTLERS- 



137 



Swedes, as if they declined to profit by the peculiar 
adaptedness of their soils to fruit culture. Yet they 
must have been the first to naturalize the apple, 
the cherry, and the peach on the Delaware, and 
we must give them the credit of having anticipated 
the cherry and apple orchards of Eastern Pennsyl- 
vania and Cumberland Valley, aud the grand peach- 
tree rows for which the streets of Germantown be- 
came famous. It was a Dutchman, settled among 
the earlier Swedes, 1 who produced the best cooking 
apple, and one of the best sort for eating — the Van- 
devere — that is grown in the Middle States, and it was 
descendants of Delaware Swedes 2 who earliest culti- 
vated the peach by wholesale, and made it an article 
of commerce. The peach-tree probably came to 
Delaware from Maryland, having traveled along the 
coast from the early Spanish settlements in Florida, 
but it has nowhere become so completely naturalized, 
so healthy, so productive of large, succulent, delicious 
fruit as in the country which the Swedes first re- 
claimed from the wilderness. In the time of Acre- 
lius the peach was supposed to be indigenous, and 
was cultivated so extensively as to be relied upon as 
a standard food for swine. 

Domestic animals increased very rapidly among 
the Swedes. They imported their own milch kine 
and oxen in the first instance, but they found horses 
and swine running at large and wild, many having 
escaped into the " backwoods" from the Maryland 
planters. 3 These horses had a good touch of the true 
Barb blood in them, as descendants of Virginia thor- 
oughbred sires, and they were probably crossed with 
pony stock from Sweden. It seems likely that it is to 
this cross and the wild, half-starved existence they 
have led for two hundred years, living on salt grass 
and asparagus and fish, bedding in the sand and de- 
fying storm and mosquitoes, that, we owe the incom- 
parable breed of "beach'' or Chingoteague ponies, fast, 
wiry, true as steel, untiring, sound, with hoofs as hard 
as iron and spirits that never flag. Acrelius noticed 
them acutely. He would not have been a parson if 
he had not had a keen eye for a horse. He says, 
"The horses are real ponies, and are seldom found 
over sixteen hands high. He who has a good riding 
horse never employs him for draught, which is also 
the less necessary, as journeys are for the most part 
made on horseback. It must be the result of this, 
more than of any particular breed in the horse, that 
the country excels in fast horses, so that horse-races are 
often made for very high stakes. A good horse will go 
more than a Swedish mile (six and three-quarter Eng- 
lish miles) in an hour, and is not to be bought for less 
than six hundred dollars copper coinage" (sixty dol- 



1 Philip Van der Weer's brick houHe at Traders' Hook, on the Brandy- 
wine, was built before 1655. 

2 The B-eybolds. 

3 Bacon's Laws of Maryland (1635-1751) are full of statutes relating 
to wild horses and their depredationB, and to ear-marks and incloaures 
for all kinds of stock. 



lars). The cattle, says Acrelius, are middling, yield- 
ing, when fresh and when on good pasture, a gallon 
of milk a day. The upland meadows abounded 
in red and white clover, says this close observer, but 
only the first Swedish settlers had stabling for their 
stocks, except in cases of exceptionally good hus- 
bandry. Horses, cattle, sheep, and hogs ran out all 
the time, being inclosed at night, and sometimes 
sheltered in severe weather. They were, however, 
fed with grain, such as oats, corn, and buckwheat, in 
addition to fodder, in winter, the food of milch cows 
being bran or other ground mill-stuff. Acrelius says, 
in his dry, humorous way, "the man-servant takes 
care of the foddering of the cattle, whilst the house- 
wife and women-folks roast themselves by the kitchen 
fire, doubting whether any one can do that better than 
themselves." 

The excellent Swedish pastor was a connoisseur in 
drinks as well as horse-flesh, and he has catalogued 
the beverages used by the Swedes'with the accuracy 
and minuteness of detail of a manager of a rustic fair. 
After enumerating the imported wines, of which Ma- 
deira was the favorite of course, he describes, like an 
expert, the composition of sangaree, mulled wine, 
cherry and currant wine, and how cider, cider royal, 
cider-wine, and mulled cider are prepared. Our rev- 
erend observer makes the following commentary upon 
the text of rum : " This is made at the sugar-planta- 
tions in the West India Islands. It is in quality like 
French brandy, but has no unpleasant odor. It makes 
up a large part of the English and French commerce 
with the West India Islands. The strongest comes 
from Jamaica, is called Jamaica spirits, and is the 
favorite article for punch. Next in quality to this 
is the rum from Barbadoes, then that from Anti- 
guas, Montserrat, Nevis, St. Christopher's, etc. The 
heaviest consumption is in harvest-time, when the 
laborers most frequently take a sup, and then imme- 
diately a drink of water, from which the body per- 
forms its work more easily and perspires better than 
when rye whiskey or malt liquors are used." Rum, 
he tells us, was drunk raw, or as egg-nog (" egg-dram"), 
or in the form of cherry bounce or billberry bounce; 
" punch," our learned author says, "is made of fresh 
spring-water, sugar, lemon-juice, and Jamaica spirits. 
Instead of lemons, a West India fruit called limes, or 
its juice, which is imported in flasks, is used. Punch 
is always drunk cold ; but sometimes a slice of bread 
is toasted and placed in it warm to moderate the cold 
in winter-time, or it is heated with a red-hot iron. 
Punch is mostly used just before dinner, and is called 
' a meridian.' " * The other preparations in which rum 
was an ingredient included Miimm (mum), made of 
water, sugar, and rum (" is the most common drink 
in the interior of the country, and has set up many a 
tavern-keeper") ; " Manatham," small beer, rum, and 



* Not because it aided " navigation," 
twelve o'clock 



but because our Swedes dined at 



138 



HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA. 



sugar; "tiff" or " flipp,'' same as foregoing, with the 
addition of a slice of toasted and buttered bread ; hot 
rum punch, rum and water warmed up, with sugar 
and allspice, — "customary at funerals;" mulled rum, 
hot, with eggs and allspice ; Mitt-Pat, warmed beer 
with rum added; "Sampson," warmed cider with 
rum added; grog; "sling" or " long sup," half-aud- 
half sweetened rum and water ; milk punch ; mint- 
water; egg-punch, etc. "Sillibub" is made like the 
Swedish " Oelost," of milk-warm milk, wine, and 
water, — a cooling beverage in summer-time ; " still- 
liquor" was the country name for peach or apple 
brandy ; whiskey, our author says, " is used far up in 
the interior of the country, where rum is very dear on 
account of the transportation." The people in the 
town drink beer and small beer ; in the country, 
spruce, persimmon-beer, and mead. Besides this 
there are numerous liquors. Tea was commonly used, 
but often brandy was put in it; coffee was coming 
into use as a breakfast beverage, the berries imported 
from Martinique, San Domingo, and Surinam, and 
chocolate also was not neglected. 

In spite of all these liquids the early Swedes did 
not neglect solids. Their meals were four a day, — 
breakfast, dinner, "four o'clock piece," and supper, 
the latter sometimes dispensed with. There was no 
great variety of dishes, but such as were served were 
substantial ; ham, beef tongue, roast beef, fowls, "with 
cabbage set round about," was one bill of fare; roast 
mutton or veal, with potatoes or turnips, another; a 
third might be a pasty of deer, turkey, chickens, part- 
ridges, or lamb ; a fourth, beef-steak, veal cutlets, 
mutton-chops, or turkey, goose or fowls, with pota- 
toes set around, "stewed green peas, Turkish beans, 
or some other beans ;" apple, peach, cherry, or cran- 
berry pie " form another course. When cheese and 
butter are added, one has an ordinary meal." For 
breakfast, tea or coffee, with chipped beef in summer, 
milk-toast and buckwheat-cakes in winter, the "four 
o'clock piece" being like the breakfast. Chocolate 
was commonly taken with supper. The Swedes used 
very little soup and very little fish, either fresh or 
cured. " The arrangement of meals among country 
people is usually this : for breakfast, in summer, cold 
milk and bread, riee, milk-pudding, cheese, butter, 
and cold meat. In winter, mush and milk, milk- 
porridge, hominy, and milk ; supper the same. For 
noon, in summer, ' sappa' (the French bouillon, meat- 
broth, with bread-crumbs added, either drunk or 
eaten with spoons out of common tin cups), fresh 
meat, dried beef, and bacon, with cabbage, apples, 
potatoes, Turkish beans, large beans, all kinds of 
roots, mashed turnips, pumpkins, cashaws, and 
squashes. One or more of these are distributed 
around the dish; also boiled or baked pudding, 
dumplings, bacon and eggs, pies of apples, cherries, 
peaches, etc." 1 

1 The pudding, says Acrelhis in a nute, was boiled in a bag; it was 
called a fine pudding when fruit was added; baked pudding was the 



The land was so settled in the time of Acrelius 
that each had his separate ground, and mostly fenced 
in. "So far as possible the people took up their 
abodes on navigable streams, so that the farms 
stretched from the water in small strips up into the 
land." The Swedes used boats a great deal. They 
always went to church in boats if the ice permitted, 
and they had a great quarrel with Chambers, to whom 
Penn had given the monopoly of the Schuylkill Ferry, 
because he would not let their boats cross without 
paying toll. The houses were solid; in Acrelius' 
time mostly built of brick or stone, but earlier of logs, 
often squared oak logs, not often more than a story 
and a half high. The roofs were covered with oak 
or cedar shingles ; the walls plastered and white- 
washed once a year. The windows were large, often 
with hinged frames, but very small panes of glass 
when any at all was used, and all the chimneys 
smoked. In some houses straw carpets were to be 
found, but the furniture, was always simple and 
primitive, made of country woods, with now and 
then a mahogany piece. The clothing was plain, 
domestic linen being worn in summer, and domestic 
woolens, kerseys, and linseys in winter, with some 
calicoes and cottons of imported stocks. The domes- 
tic cloth was good in quality, but badly dyed. For 
finer occasions plush and satin were sometimes worn. 
Our good parson, by whose observations we have 
been profiting, notes the progress luxury had been 
making among the Swedes. He says, " The times 
within fifty years are as changed as night is from 
day. . . . Formerly the church people could come 
some Swedish miles on foot to church ; now the 
young, as well as the old, must be upon horseback. 
Then many a good and honest man rode upon a piece 
of bear-skin; now scarcely any saddle is valued unless 
it has a saddle-cloth with galloon and fringe. Then 
servants and girls were seen in church barefooted; 
now young people will be like persons of quality in 
their dress ; servants are seen with perruques du crains 
and the like, girls with hooped skirts, fine stuff-shoes, 
and other finery. Then respectable families lived in 
low log houses, where the chimney was made of sticks 
covered with clay ; now they erect painted houses of 
stone and brick in the country. Then they used ale 
and brandy, now wine and punch. Then they lived 
upon grits and mush, now upon tea, coffee, and choc- 
olate." 

Stray hints of the simple manners of these prim- 
itive times, and of the honesty, ingenuousness, and 
quaint religious faith of the people crop out now and 
then in the accounts which Acrelius gives of the 
churches and his predecessors in their pulpits. When 
the "upper settlers" and "lower settlers" quarreled 



young people's pancake; dumplings and puddings were called " Quakers' 
food." Apple-pie was used all the year, — "the evening meal of children. 
Uouse-pie, in country places, is made of apples neither peeled nor freed 
from their cores, and Us crust is not brokm if a wagon-whect goes over 
ill" 



MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OP THE SETTLERS. 



139 



about the place for their new church, and Wicaco 
carried the day, the lower settlers were placated with 
a flat-boat, maintained at the expense of the con- 
gregation, to ferry them over the Schuylkill. The 
church wardens kept the keys of the boat. This was 
the beginning of the church "Gloria Dei," so ven- 
erable in the eyes of Philadelphians. The pastor's 
pay was sixty pounds, the sexton's eight pounds. 
If a man came drunk to church he was fined forty 
shillings and made to do public penance. The pen- 
alty for " making sport of God's word or sacraments" 
was five pounds fine, and penance. For " untimely 
singing,' - five shillings fine. If one refused to sub- 
mit to this sort of discipline he was excluded from 
the society and his body could not be buried in the 
churchyard. The pastor and wardens looked care- 
fully after betrothals and marriages. The whole 
congregation were catechized and also examined 
upon the contents of the sermon. There were also 
"spiritual examinations" made once a year in fami- 
lies. Each church had its glebe, the income from 
which was the pastor's, who also received a consider- 
able sum from funerals, marriages, etc. The church 
bell was swung in a tree. Among the fixtures of the 
parsonage was a negro woman belonging to the con- 
gregation and included in the inventory of glebe 
property. When she grew old, "contrary," and " use- 
less," she was sold for seven shillings. When the 
Christina Church was restored there was a great feast 
and a general revival of interest in the ancient 
Swedish ways. Matins were held at Christmas, 
Easter, and Pentecost; garlanded lights and side 
lights of pine wood for Christmas service, and bridal 
pairs came to the services in the church with crowns 
and garlands, their hair dressed after the old-time 
Swedish custom. Among the new regulations of 
Pastor Hesselius was one to prevent people from 
driving across the churchyard, another forbidding 
them to sing as if they were calling their cows. 
People with harsh voices were ordered to stand mute 
or "sing softly." The Christina Church owned town- 
lots in Wilmington, and used to hire out its "pall- 
cloth" for five shillings each funeral. The charge 
for burying a grown person was twelve shillings, 
children half-price. 

The Swedish pastors were generally learned and 
accomplished men, who exerted themselves success- 
fully in directing the minds of their congregations to 
the necessity of education. The original settlers were 
ignorant people, few of whom could write their names. 
Even Lasse Cock, agent for Penn and Markham for 
twenty years, could not at first do better than sign his 
" mark" to writings. The pastors, however, always 
made a brave stand for education, and were the means 
of preventing the Swedish tongue in America from 
sinking into oblivion. They also maintained as many 
of the old observances and religious ceremonies as 
possible, such as baptism soon after birth, an actual 
instead of formal sponsorship on the part of the god- 



parents, the old service of the churching of women, 
a general attendance upon the service and sacrament 
of the altar, and a return to the ancient forms of be- 
trothal and marriage. " The old speak of the joy," 
says Acrelius, " with which their bridal parties for- 
merly came to church and sat during the whole ser- 
vice before the altar." Burials were solemn occasions, 
but had their feasts as well. The. corpse was borne 
to the grave on a bier, the pall-bearers, chosen from 
those of the same sex and age of the deceased, walk- 
ing close alongside and holding up the corners of the 
pall. 

A few of the log cabins occupied by the primitive 
Swedes were standing within a few years. Watson, in 
his Annals, describes one of the better class in Swan- 
son's house, near Wicaco. John Hill Martin, in his 
History of Chester, recalls two or three of these an- 
cient houses. They were very rude affairs, with seldom 
more than a living-room with a loft over it, doors so 
low that one had to enter stooping, windows small 
square holes cut in the logs, protected by isinglass or 
oiled paper, or thin stretched bladders, often with 
nothing but a sliding board shutter. The chimney 
was in the corner, of sticks and clay, or sandstone 
blocks, generally built outside the house. The first 
Swede settlers imitated the Indians by dressing in 
skins and wearing moccasins. The women's jackets 
and petticoats and the bedclothes were of the same 
materials. The furs were by and by superseded by 
leather breeches and jerkins, while the women spun, 
wove, or knit their own woolen wear, as well as the 
linen forsummer. The women, old and married, wore 
hoods in winter, linen caps in summer, but the un- 
married girls went uncovered except in the hot sun, 
dressing their abundant yellow hair in long, broad 
plaits. 

The proof of the industry of the early Swedes is to 
be sought in their works. They were a scattered, 
ignorant race, with no capital, few tools, and no occu- 
pations but those of husbandry and hunting. They 
were only a thousand strong when Penn came over, 
yet they had extended their settlements over a tract 
nearly two hundred miles long and seven or eight 
miles deep, building three churches and five or six 
block-houses and forts, clearingup forests and draining 
swamps to convert them into meadow land. They 
had discovered and worked the iron deposits of Mary- 
land in two or three places. They had built about a 
hundred houses, fenced in much of their land, and 
made all their own clothes, importing nothing but the 
merest trifles, besides arms and ammunition, hymn- 
books, and catechisms. They had built grist-mills 
and saw-mills, having at least four of the latter in 
operation before Penn's arrival. 1 According to Ferris, 
however, the frame of the house in which Governor 
Lovelace entertained George Fox in 1672 was made 
entirely of hewn timbers, none of the stuff being 



1 Bishop, History of Manufactures, i. 110. 



140 



HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA. 



sawed, the mortar and cement being made of oyster- 
shell lime; the house itself was built of brick. Gov- 
ernor Printz found a wind-mill at Christiana in 1643, 
but he says it never would work. On the other side 
of the river there were horse-mills. One at South 
Amboy in 1685, it was estimated, would clear the 
owner £100 a year, the toll for grinding a " Scotch 
bell" (six bushels) of Indian corn being two shillings 
sterling, equal to one bushel in every four and a half. 
But probably more than half the early settlers had to 
do as a primitive denizen in Burlington reports him- 
self as doing, pounding Indian corn one day for the 
next. In 1680, two years before Penn, Thomas Olive 
had finished his water-mill at Rancocas Creek, and 
Robert Stacey his at Trenton. Printz's mill on Cobb's 
Creek was built in 1643, and Campanius reports it as 
doing admirable work. Joost Andriansen & Co. built 
a grist-mill at New Castle in 1662. In 1671 there was 
a proposition made by New Castle to erect a distillery 
for grain, but the court negatived it, except the grain 
be " unfit to grind and boult," because the process of 
distilling consumed such " an immense amount of 
grain." 

Hallam is right in saying that " No chapter in the 
history of national manners would illustrate so well, 
if duly executed, the progress of social life as that 
dedicated to domestic architecture." After the saw- 
mill the brick-kiln follows naturally and rapidly. 
Hazard produces a petition to New Amstel court, in 
1656, from Jacobus Crabbe, referring to a plantation 
" near the corner where bricks and stones are made 
and baked." The Dutch introduced brick-making on 
the Delaware, the Swedes being used to wooden houses 
in their own country. The court-house at Upland, 
in which Penn's first Assembly was held, was of 
brick. 

The Swedes not only made tea of the sassafras, but 
they made both beer and brandy from the persimmon, 
and small beer from Indian corn. Kalm says that the 
brewing and distilling were conducted by the women. 
The Dutch had several breweries in the settlement 
about 1662. Coffee was too high to be much used in 
the seventeenth century. Penn's books show that it 
cost eighteen shillings and sixpence per pound in New 
York, and that .would buy nearly a barrel of rum. 
Tea fetched from twenty-two to fifty shillings, cur- 
rency, a pound. 

Governor Printz was expressly instructed to encour- 
age all sorts of domestic manufactures and the propa- 
gation of sheep. There were eighty of these animals 
in New Sweden in 1663, and the people made enough 
woolen and linen cloth to supplement their furs and 
give them bed and table linen. They also tanned 
their own leather, and made their own boots and 
shoes, when they wore any. Hemp was as much 
spun and wove almost as flax. The Swedes who had 
the land owned large herds of cattle, forty and sixty 
head in a herd. The Dutch commissaries enjoined to 
search closely for all sorts of mineral wealth on the 



South Biver, and those who discovered valuable metal 
of any kind were allowed the sole use of it for ten 
years. The Dutch discovered and worked iron in the 
Kittatinny Mountains, and, as has already been shown, 
the Swedes opened iron ore pits in Cecil County, Md. 
Charles Pickering found the copper with which he 
debased the Spanish reals and the Massachusetts pine- 
tree shillings on land of his own in Chester County. 
When William Penn arrived in the Delaware in 
1682, on October 27th, there were probably 3500 white 
people in the province and territories and on the east- 
ern bank of the Delaware from Trenton to Salem. A 
few wigwams and not over twenty houses were to be 
found within the entire limits of what is now Phila- 
delphia County. There were small towns at Hore- 
kills, New Castle, Christiana, Upland, Burlington, and 
Trenton, and a Swedish hamlet or two at Tinicum 
and near Wicaco. Before the end of his first year in 
the province eighty houses had been built in the new 
city of Philadelphia, various industrial jjursuits had 
been inaugurated, and a fair and paying trade was 
opened with the Indians. When Penn left the prov- 
ince in 1684 his government was fully established, 
his chief town laid out, his province divided into 
six counties, and twenty-two townships. He had 
sold 600,000 acres of land for £20,000 cash and 
annual quit-rents of £500. The population exceeded 
7000 souls, of whom 2500 resided in Philadelphia, 
which had already 300 houses built, and had estab- 
lished a considerable trade with the West Indies, 
South America, England, and the Mediterranean. 
When Penn returned again in 1699, the population 
of the province exceeded 20,000, and Philadelphia 
and its liberties had nigh 5000 people. It was a very 
strange population moreover. Not gathered together 
by the force of material and temporary inducements, 
not drawn on by community of interests nor the de- 
sire of betterments instinctive in the human heart, 
with no homogenousness of race, religion, custom, 
and habit, one common principle attracted them to 
the spot, and that was the desire of religious liberty, 
the intense longing to escape from under the baneful, 
withering shadow of politico-religious persecution to 
which the chief tenet of their faith, non-resistance 
and submission to the civil authority, prevented them 
from offering any opposition. They desired to flee 
because their religious opinions bound them not to 
fight. They were not of the church militant, like the 
Puritans and Huguenots and Anabaptists, and so it 
became them to join the church migratory and seek 
in uninhabited wilds the freedom of conscience de- 
nied them among the communities of men. They 
were radicals and revolutionists in the highest degree, 
for they upheld, and died on the scaffold and at the 
stake sooner than cease to maintain, the right of the 
people to think for themselves, and think their own 
thoughts instead of what their self-constituted rulers 
and teachers commanded them to think. But they did 
not resist authority : when the statute and their con- 



MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE SETTLERS. 



141 



sciences were at variance they calmly obeyed the lat- 
ter and took the consequences. They knew them- 
selves to be abused and shamefully misused, but they 
believed in the final supremacy of moral and intel- 
lectual forces over despotic forces. They believed 
with Wiclif that " Dominion belongs to grace,'' and 
they waited hopefully for the coming of the period of 
intellectual freedom which should justify their action 
before men and prove the correctness of their faith in 
human progress. But all this trust in themselves and 
the future did not contribute materially to lighten the 
burden of persecution in the present, and they sought 
with anxiety for a place which would give them rest 
from the weariness of man's injustice. They became 
pilgrims, and gathered their little congregation to- 
gether wherever a faint lifting in the black cloud of 
persecution could be discerned. Thus it was that 
they drifted into Holland and the lower Rhine prov- 
inces of Germany, and became wanderers everywhere, 
seeking an asylum for conscience' sake, — a lodge in 
some wilderness, where "rumor of oppression and 
deceit might never reach," and where they might 
await in comparative peace the better time that was 
coming. The great King Gustavus Adolphus perhaps 
meant to offer them such an asylum in America, but 
his message was sent in the hurry of war and it was 
not audible in the din of battles. When, however, 
this offer was renewed and repeated in the plain lan- 
guage of the Quakers by William Penn, it was both 
heard and understood, and the persecuted peoples 
made haste to accept the generous asylum and avail 
themselves of the liberal offer. They did so in a 
spirit of perfect faith that is creditable both to their 
own ingenuousness and to the character which Penn 
had established among his contemporaries for upright- 
ness and fair and square dealing. It is pathetic to 
read, in the records of the Swiss Mennonites, how, 
after they had decided to emigrate, " they returned to 
the Palatinate to seek their wives and children, who 
are scattered everywhere in Switzerland, in Alsace, 
and in the Palatinate, and they know not where they 
are to be found." 

Thus the movement into Pennsylvania began, a 
strange gathering of a strange people, much suffer- 
ing, capable of much enduring. Of the Germans 
themselves one of their own preachers 1 wrote : "They 
were naturally very rugged people, who could endure 
much hardships; they wore long and unshaven 
beards, disordered clothing, great shoes, which were 
heavily hammered with iron and large nails; they 
had Jived in the mountains of Switzerland, far from 
cities and towns, with little intercourse with other 
men; their speech is rude and uncouth, and they 
have difficulty in understanding any one who does 
not speak just their way ; they are very zealous to 
serve God with prayer and reading and in other ways, 
and very innocent in all their doings as lambs and 

i Laurens Hendricks, of Nimeguen. 



doves." The Quakers, too, bore proof in their looks 
of the double annealing of fanaticism and persecu- 
tion. They wore strange garbs, had unworldly man- 
ners and customs, and many of them had cropped 
ears and slit noses, and were gaunt and hollow-eyed 
from long confinement in jails and prison-houses. 
The influence of George Fox's suit of leather clothes 
was still felt among them. They were chiefly of the 
plebeian classes, the true English democracy, yeo- 
men, tinkers, tradesmen, mechanics, retail shopmen 
of the cities and towns; scarcely one of the gentry 
and very few of the university people and educated 
classes. From Wales, however, the Thomases, Rees, 
and Griffiths came, with red, freckled faces, shaggy 
beards, and pedigrees dating back to Adam. Persecu- 
tion had destroyed their hitherto unconquerable devo- 
tion to their own mountains, but they took their pedi- 
grees with them in emigrating, and settling on a tract 
of hills and quaking mosses, where the soil recom- 
mended itself much less to them than the face of the 
country, they sought to feel at home by giving to the 
new localities names which recalled the places from 
which they had banished themselves. 

Such were the emigrants who sailed — mostly from 
London and Bristol — to help build up Penn's asylum 
in the wilderness. The voyage was tedious, and could 
seldom be made in less than two months. The ves- 
sels in which they sailed were ill appointed and 
crowded. Yet at least fifteen thousand persons, men, 
women, and children, took this voyage between 1681 
and 1700. The average passage-money was, allowing 
for children, about seventy shillings per head, so the 
emigrants expended £50,000 in this one way. Their 
purchases of land cost them £25,000 more ; the aver- 
age purchases were about £6 for each head of family ; 
quit-rents one shilling sixpence. The general cost 
of emigration is set forth in a pamphlet of 1682, re- 
published by the Pennsylvania Historical Society, 
and attributed to Penn, and he must have directed 
the publication, though it is anonymous. In this 
pamphlet it is suggested that a man with £100 in 
pieces-of-eight may pay his own way and his family's 
by judicious speculation. The " advance in money" — 
i.e., the difference between specie value in London and 
on the Delaware — is thirty per cent., on goods the 
advance is fifty per cent., and this pamphlet supposes 
that these advances will pay the cost of emigration. 
The figures are too liberal ; however, they give us 
an idea of what the expenses were which a family 
had to incur. They are as follows : 

i. ,. d. 
Tor five persons'— man and wife, two servants, and a child of 

ten— passage-money 22 10 

For a ton of goods— freight (each taking out a chest wilhout 

charge for freight) 2 

Ship's surgeon, "1*. tid. per head 12 6 

Four gallons of Uiandy, 24 lhs. sugar 10 

Clothes for servants (U shirts, 2 waistcoats, a summer and win- 
ter suit, hat, 2 pair shoeB, underclothing, etc.) 12 

Cost of hnilding a house 15 

Stock for farm 24 10 

Year's provisions for family ','.'.'.'.'.'. 16 17 6 

Total £06 00 00 



142 



HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA. 



This, it will be observed, on a favorable, one-sided 
showing, is £20 per capita for man, woman, child, and 
servant, outside of the cost of land. If we allow £10 
additional for cost of land, transportation, and other 
extras, leaving out clothes for the family, we shall 
have £30 a head as the cost of immigration and one 
year's keep until the land begins to produce crops. 
It thus appears that the early immigrants into Penn- 
sylvania must have expended at least £450,000 in 
getting there in the cheapest way. The actual cost 
was probably more than double that amount. In a 
letter written by Edward Jones, "Chirurgeon," from 
" Skoolkill River," Aug. 26, 1682, to John ap Thomas, 
founder of the first Welsh settlement, we have some 
particulars of a voyage across the ocean at that time. 
Thomas and sixteen others had bought a five-thousand- 
acre tract of Penn. The rest sailed from Liverpool, 
but Thomas was ill, and not able to come. Hence 
the letter, which is published in a memoir of " John 
ap Thomas and his friends," in the Pennsylvania 
Magazine, vol. iv. The voyage took eleven weeks. 
"And in all this time we wanted neither meat, drink, 
or water, though several hogsheads of water ran out. 
Our ordinary allowance of beer was three pints a day 
for each whole head and a quart of water, 3 biskedd 
(biscuits) a day & sometimes more. We laid in about 
half hundred of biskedd, one barrell of beere, one 
hogshed of water, the quantity for each whole head, 
& 3 barrells of beefe for the whole number — 40 — and 
we had one to come ashore. A great many could eat 
little or no beefe, though it was good. Butter and 
cheese eats well upon ye sea. Y e remainder of our 
cheese & butter is little or no worster ; butter & cheese 
is at 6d. per pound here, if not more. We have oat- 
meale to spare, but it is well y l we have it, for here is 
little or no corn till they begin to sow their corn, they 
have plenty of it. . . . Y e name of town lots is called 
now Wicoco; here is a Crowd of people striving for 
y e Country land, for y e town lot is not divided, & there- 
fore we are forced to take up y e Country lots. We had 
much adoe to get a grant of it, but it Cost us 4 or 5 
days attendance, besides some score of miles we trav- 
elled before we brought it to pass. I hope it will 
please thee and the rest y' are concerned, for it hath 
most rare timber. I have not seen the like in all 
these parts." Mr. Jones also states that the rate for 
surveying one hundred acres was twenty shillings — 
half as much as the price of the land. At this rate, 
Jones, Thomas and company had to pay £50 for sur- 
veying their tract of five thousand acres. 

It will be noticed that the face of the country 
pleased Dr. Jones, and he is satisfied with the land 
selected by him. All the early immigrants and col- 
onists were pleased with the new land, and enthusi- 
astic in regard to its beauty and its promise of pro- 
ductiveness. Penn is not more so than the least 
prosperous of his followers. Indeed it is a lovely 
country to-day, and in its wild, virgin beauty must 
have had a rare charm and attraction for the ocean- 



weary first settlers. They all write about it in the 
same warm strain. Thus, for instance, let us quote 
from the letter written in 1680 to his brother by 
Mahlon Stacey, who built the first mill on the site 
of the city of Trenton. Stacey was a man of good 
education and family. He had traveled much in 
Pennsylvania and New Jersey, where he made a 
great fortune and became a leading citizen, his chil- 
dren intermarrying with the best people in the two 
colonies. The letter, which we quote from Gen. 
Davis' " History of Bucks County," says that " it is a 
country that produces all things for the sustenance 
of man in u, plentiful manner. . . I have traveled 
through most of the settled places, and some that are 
not, and find the country very apt to answer the ex- 
pectations of the diligent. I have seen orchards 
laden with fruit to admiration, planted by the Swedes, 
their very limbs torn to pieces with the weight, and 
most delicious to the taste and lovely to behold. I 
have seen an apple-tree from a pippin kernel yield a 
barrel of curious cider, and peaches in such plenty 
that some people took their carts a peach gathering. 
I could not but smile at the sight of it. They are a 
very delicate fruit, and hang almost like our onions 
that are tied on ropes. I have seen and known this 
summer forty bushels of bolted wheat harvested from 
one sown. We have from the time called May to 
Michaelmas great stores of very good wild fruits, as 
strawberries, cranberries, and huckleberries, which 
are much like bilberries in England, but far sweeter; 
the cranberries much like cherries for color and big- 
ness, which may be kept till fruit comes in again. 
An excellent sauce is made of them for venison, tur- 
key, and great fowl ; they are better to make tarts 
than either cherries or gooseberries ; the Indians 
bring them to our houses in great plenty. My brother 
Robert had as many cherries this year as would have 
loaded several carts. From what I have observed it 
is my judgment that fruit-trees in this country destroy 
themselves by the very weight of their fruit. As for 
venison and fowls, we have great plenty; we have 
brought home to our houses by the Indians seven or 
eight fat bucks of a day, and sometimes put by as 
many, having no occasion for them. My cousin 
Revels and I, with some of my men, went last Third 
month into the river to catch herrings, for at that 
time they came in great shoals into the shallows. 
We had no net, but, after the Indian fashion, made a 
round pinfold about two yards over and a foot high, 
but left a gap for the fish to go in at, and made a 
bush to lay in the gap to keep the fish in. AVhen 
that was done we took two long birches and tied their 
tops together, and went about a stone's cast above 
our said pinfold; then hauling these birch boughs 
down the stream, we drove thousands before us, and 
as many got into our trap as it would hold. Then 
we began to throw them on shore as fast as three or 
four of us could bag two or three at a time. After 
this manner in half an hour we could have filled a 



MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE SETTLERS. 



143 



three-bushel sack with as fine herring as ever I saw. 
... As to beef and pork, there is a great plenty of 
it and cheap ; also good sheep. The common grass 
of the country feeds beef very fat. . . . We have 
great plenty of most sorts of fishes that ever I saw in 
England, besides several sorts that are not known 
there, as rock, catfish, shad, sheepshead, and stur- 
geon ; and fowls are as plenty — ducks, geese, turkeys, 
pheasants, partridges, and many other sorts. Indeed 
the country, take it as a wilderness, is a brave coun- 
try, though no place will please all. There is some 
barren land, and more wood than some would have 
upon their land ; neither will the country produce 
corn without labor, nor is cattle got without some- 
thing to buy them, nor bread with idleness, else it 
would be a brave country indeed. I question not but 
all would then give it a good word. For my part I 
like it so well I never had the least thought of re- 
turning to England except on account of trade." 
"I wonder at our Yorkshire people," says Stacey, in 
another letter of the same date, "that they had rather 
live in servitude, work hard all the year, and not be 
threepence better at the year's end, than to stir out 
of the chimney-corner and transport themselves to a 
place where, with the like pains, in two or three 
years they might know better things. I live as well 
to my content and in as great plenty as ever I did, 
and in a far more likely way to get an estate." 

Judge John Holme, in his so-called poem on "the 
flourishing State of Pennsylvania," written in 1696, 
seems to have tried to set the views of Stacey to 
music. True there is not much tune nor rhythm in 
the verse, but the Pennsylvania writer of Georgics has 
a shrewd eye for a catalogue, and he would have 
shone as an auctioneer. He sings the goodness of 
the soil, the cheapness of the land, the trees so 
abundant in variety that scarcely any man can name 
them all, the fruits and nuts, mulberries, hazelnuts, 
strawberries, and "plumbs," "which pleaseth those 
well who to eat them comes," the orchards, cherries 
so plentiful that the planters bring them to town in 
boats (these are the Swedes, of course), peaches so 
plenty the people cannot eat half of them, apples, 
pears, and quinces, 

" And fruit-trees do grow so fast in this ground 
That we begin with cider to abound." 

The fields and gardens rejoice in the variety as well 
as the abundance of their products ; in the woods are 
found " wax-berries, elkermis, turmerick, and sarsi- 
frax;" the maple trunks trickle with sugar, and our 
author tells how to boil it; he gives the names of 
fish, flesh, and fowls, including whales and sturgeons, 
and describes the industries of Philadelphia, of which 
he says, "Strangers do wonder, and some say, — 

" What mean these Quakers thus to raise 
TheBe Btately fabrics to their praise? 
Since we well know and understand 
When they were in their native land 
They were in prison trodden down, 
And can they now build such a town ?" 



The royalists of that day, however, saw the growth 
of the new city and province with quite another eye, 
and they were filled with foreboding as they saw, in 
the language of one of their rhymesters, — 

■' How Pennsylvania's air agrees with Quakers, 
And Carolina's with Assouiators, 
Both e'en too good for madmen and for traitors. 
Truth is, the land with saints is so run o'er. 
And every age producessuch a store, 
That now there's need of two New Englands more." 

Richard Frame was author of another poem on 
Pennsylvania, "printed and sold by William Brad- 
ford, 1692." It is like that of Holme's, mainly de- 
scriptive, and prophetic likewise of the coming wealth 
and greatness of the province. " No doubt," he says, — 

" No doubt but you will like this country well. 
We that did leave our country thought it strange 
That ever we should make so good a change." 

This poem was written and printed only seven or 
eight years after the settlement of Germantown, yet 
Frame says, — 

" The German Town of which I spoke before, 
Wlrich is at least in length one Mile and More, 
Where lives Iligh German People and Low Dutch, 
Wliose trade in weaving Linnen cloth is much, 
There grows the Flax, as also you may know, 
That from the same they do divide the Tow," etc. 

Traders, he says, are brotherly ; one brings in em- 
ployment for another, and the linen rags of Ger- 
mantown have led naturally to the paper-mill near 
the Wissahickon. Of the Welsh he makes a passing 
reference, as well as of the many townships laid out 
and the " multitudes of new plantations." 

The Englishman of that day was still untamed. 
He had a passion, inherited from his Anglo-Saxon 
forbears, for the woods and streams, for outdoor life 
and the adventures which attend it. He had not 
forgotten that he was only a generation or two 
younger than Robin Hood and Will Scarlet, and he 
could not be persuaded that the poacher was a crimi- 
nal. All the emigration advertisements, circulars, and 
prospectuses sought to profit by this passion in pre- 
senting the natural charms of America in the most 
seductive style. While the Spanish enlisting officers 
worked by the spell of the magic word " gold !" and 
the canny Amsterdam merchants talked " beaver" 
and " barter" and " cent, per cent.," the English so- 
licitors for colonists andlaborers never ceased to dwell 
upon the normal attractions of the bright new land, 
the adventures it offered, and the easy freedom to be 
enjoyed there. Thus in advocating his West Jersey 
settlements John Fenwick wrote in this way : " If 
there be any terrestrial happiness to be had by any 
People, especially of any inferior rank, it must cer- 
tainly be here. Here any one may furnish himself 
with Land, and live Rent free, yea, with such a quan- 
tity of Land, that he may weary himself with walk- 
ing over his Fields of Corn, and all sorts of Grain, 
and let his Stock amount to some hundreds ; he needs 
not fear their want of Pasture in the Summer or 



144 



HISTOKY OF PHILADELPHIA. 



Fodder in the Winter, the Woods affording sufficient 
supply, where you have Grass as high as a Man's 
Knees, nay, as his Waste, interlaced with Pea- Vines 
and other Weeds that Cattell much delight in, as 
much as a Man can pass through ; and these Woods 
also every Mile and half mile are furnished with 
fresh Ponds, Brooks, or Rivers, where all sorts of cat- 
tell, during the heat of the Day, do quench their thirst 
and Cool themselves. These Brooks and Rivers being 
invironed of each side with several sorts of Trees and 
Grape-Vines, Arbor-like interchanging places, and 
crossing these Rivers, do shade and shelter them from 
the scorching beams of the Sun. Such as by their 
utmost labors can scarcely get a Living may here 
procure Inheritance of Lands and Possessions, stock 
themselves with all sorts of Cattle, enjoy the benefit 
of them while they live and leave them to their Chil- 
dren when they die. Here you need not trouble the 
Shambles for Meat, nor Bakers and Brewers for Beer 
and Bread, nor run to a Linen-Draper for a supply, 
every one making their own Linen and a great part 
of their Woollen Cloth for their ordinary wearing. 
And how prodigal (if I may say) hath Nature been to 
furnish this Country with all sorts of Wild Beast and 
Fowl, which every one hath an interest in and may 
Hunt at his pleasure, where, besides the pleasure in 
Hunting, he may furnish his House with excellent fat 
Venison, Turkies, Geese, Heath-hens, Cranes, Swans, 
Ducks, Pigeons, and the like; and, wearied with that, 
he may go a Fishing, where the Rivers are so fur- 
nished that he may supply himself with Fish before 
he can leave off the Recreation. Here one may Travel 
by Land upon the same Continent hundreds of Miles, 
and pass through Towns and Villages, and never hear 
the least complaint for want nor hear any ask him 
for a farthing. Here one may lodge in the Fields 
and Woods, travel from one end of the Country to 
another, with as much security as if he were lock'd 
within his own Chamber ; and if one chance to meet 
with an Indian Town, they shall give him the best 
Entertainment they have, and upon his desire direct 
him on his Way. But that which adds happiness to 
all the rest is the healthfulness of the Place, where 
many People in twenty years' time never know what 
Sickness is; where they look upon it as a great Mor- 
tality if two or three die out of a Town in a year's 
time. Besides the sweetness of the Air, the Country 
itself sends forth such a fragrant smell that it may be 
perceived at Sea before they can make the Land ; No 
evil Fog or Vapor doth any sooner appear but a 
North-West or Westerly Wind immediately dissolves 
it and drives it away. Moreover, you shall scarce see 
a House but the South side is begirt with Hives of 
Bees, which increase after an incredible manner; so 
that if there be any terrestrial Canaan, 'tis surely here, 
where the land floweth with Milk and Honey." 

This is the tenor of all the Maryland invitations to 
immigration likewise, and Penn follows the model 
closely. His letter to the Society of Free Traders 



in 1683 has already been mentioned, and also his 
proposals for colonists. In December, 1685, he issued 
a "Further Account of Pennsylvania," a supplement 
to the letter of 1683. He says that ninety vessels had 
sailed with passengers, not one of them meeting with 
any miscarriage. They had taken out seven thousand 
two hundred persons. He describes the growth of 
the city, the laying out of townships, etc. There are 
at least fifty of these, and he had visited many, find- 
ing improvements much advanced. " Houses over 
their heads and Garden-plots, coverts for their cattle, 
an increase of stock, and several inclosures in Corn, 
especially the first comers, and I may say of some 
poor men was the beginning of an Estate, the differ- 
ence of laboring for themselves and for others, of an 
Inheritance and a Rack Lease being never better un- 
derstood." The soil had produced beyond expecta- 
tion, yielding corn from thirty to sixty fold; three 
pecks of wheat sowed an acre; all English root crops 
thrive ; low lands were excellent for rope, hemp, and 
flax ; cattle find abundant food in the woods ; Eng- 
lish grass seed takes well and yields fatting hay; all 
sorts of English fruits have taken " mighty well ;" 
good wine may be made from native grapes ; the 
coast and bay abound in whales, the rivers in deli- 
cate fish ; and provisions were abundant and cheap, 
in proof of which he gives a price current. Penn 
concludes by quoting an encouraging letter he had 
received from Robert Turner. 

In 1687, Penn published another pamphlet, con- 
taining a letter from Dr. More, " with passages out 
of several letters from Persons of Good Credit, re- 
lating to the State and Improvement of the Province 
of Pennsylvania." In 1691 again he printed a third 
pamphlet, containing "Some Letters and an Abstract 
of Letters from Pennsylvania." Dr. More takes 
pains to show the plenty and prosperity which sur- 
round the people of the province. " Our lands have 
been grateful to us," he says, " and have begun to 
reward our Labors by abounding Crops of Corn." 
There was plenty of good fresh pork in market at 
two and a half pence per pound, currency ; beef, 
the same; butter, sixpence; wheat, three shillings 
per bushel ; rye at eight groats ; corn, two shillings 
in country money, and some for export. Dr. More 
had got a fine crop of wheat on his corn ground by 
simply harrowing it in ; his hop garden was very 
promising. Arnoldus de la Grange had raised one 
thousand bushels of English grain this year, and 
Dr. More says, "Every one here is now persuaded 
of the fertility of the ground and goodness of 
climate, here being nothing wanting, with industry, 
that grows in England, and many delicious things not 
attainable there ; and we have this common advan- 
tage above England, that all things grow better and 
with less labour." Penn's steward and gardener are 
represented as writing to him that the peach-trees are 
broken down with fruit ; all the plants sent out from 
England are growing ; barn, porch, and shed full of 



MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OP THE SETTLERS. 



145 



corn ; seeds sprout in half the time they require in 
England ; bulbs and flowers grow apace. David 
Lloyd writes that " Wheat (as good, I think, as any 
in England) is sold at three shillings and sixpence 
per Bushel, Country money, and for three shillings 
ready money (which makes two shillings five pence 
English sterling), and if God continues his bless- 
ing to us, this province will certainly be the gran- 
ary of America." 1 James Claypoole writes that 
he has never seen brighter and better corn than in 
these parts. The whale fishery was considerable ; one 
company would take several hundred barrels of oil, 
useful, with tobacco, skins, and furs, for commerce 
and to bring in small money (of which there is a 
scarcity) for exchange. John Goodson writes to Penn 
of the country that " it is in a prosperous condition 
beyond what many of our Friends can imagine ;" if 
Penn and his family were there " surely your Hearts 
would be greatly comforted to behold this Wilderness 
Land how it is becoming a fruitful Field and pleasant 
Garden." Robert James writes to Nathaniel Wilmer : 
" God prospers his People and their honest Endeavors 
in the Wilderness, and many have cause to Bless and 
Praise his holy Arm, who in his Love hath spread a 
Table large unto us, even beyond the expectation or 
belief of many, yea, to the admiration of our Neigh- 
boring Colonies. . . . God is amongst his People and 
the wilderness is his, and he waters and refreshes it 
with his moistening Dew, whereby the Barren are be- 
come pleasant Fields and Gardens of his delight; 
blessed be his Name, saith my Soul, and Peace and 
Happiness to all God's People everywhere." 

In 1685 a pamphlet called "Good Order Estab- 
lished," and giving an account of Pennsylvania, was 
published by Thomas Budd, a Quaker, who had held 
office in West Jersey. Budd was a visionary, mixed up 
with Keith's heresy, and wanted to get a bank estab- 
lished in Philadelphia. He built largely in that city, 
and was a close observer. He pays particular atten- 
tion to the natural advantages of the country in its 
soil, climate, products, and geographical relations. 
The days in winter are two hours longer, and in sum- 
mer two hours shorter than in England, he says, and 
hence grain and fruits mature more swiftly. He enu- 
merates the wild fowl and fish, the fruits and garden 
stuff, and thinks that the Delaware marshes, once 
drained, would be equal to the meadows of the Thames 
for wheat, peas, barley, hemp, flax, rape, and hops. 
The French settlers were already growing grapes for 
wine, and Budd thought that attempts should be made 
to produce rice, anise seed, licorice, madder, and 
woad. He has much to say about the development of 



1 " Country money'' was produce iu barter, such as furB, tobacco, 
grain, stock, etc., at rates established by the courts in collecting fees, 
etc. ; " ready money " was Spanish or New England coin, which was at 
25 per cent, discount in Old England. See Sumner, " History of Amer- 
ican Currency." The differences ure set out in "Madame Knight's 
Journal." According to the above the discount on country money was 
31 per cent, and on ready money 20 per cent. 

10 



manufactures, and he proposes to have a granary 
built on the Delaware in a fashion which is a curious 
anticipation of the modern elevator, and he projects a. 
very sensible scheme for cooperative farm-work, on 
the community plan, the land to be eventually divided 
after it has been fully cleared and improved, and the 
families of the commune have grown up. 

In 1698 was published Gabriel Thomas' " Histori- 
cal and Geographical Account of the Province and 
Country of Pennsylvania and West New Jersey, in 
America." This well-known brochure descants in 
florid and loose terms upon " The richness of the Soil, 
the sweetness of the Situation, the Wholesomene-s 
of the Air, the Navigable Rivers and others, the pro- 
digious increase of Corn, the flourishing condition of 
the City of Philadelphia, etc. The strange creatures, 
as Birds, Beasts, Fishes, and Fowls, with the Several 
Sorts of Minerals, Purging Waters, and Stones lately 
discovered. The Natives, Aborigines, and their Lan- 
guage, Religion, Laws, and Customs. The first Plan- 
ters, Dutch, Swedes, and English, with the number of 
its Inhabitants ; as also a Touch upon George Keith's 
New Religion, in his second change since he left the 
Quakers ; with a Map of both Counties." The title- 
page leaves the book but little to say. Gabriel is en- 
thusiastic about pretty much everything. He makes 
some shrewd remarks, however, as when he says that 
he has reason to believe Pennsylvania contains coal, 
"fori have observed the runs of water have the same 
color as that which proceeds from the coal mines in 
Wales." He shows the abundance of game by tell- 
ing how he had bought of the Indians a whole buck 
(both skin and carcass) for two gills of gunpowder. 
Land had advanced in twelve years from fifteen or 
eighteen shillings to eighty pounds per one hundred 
acres, over a thousand per cent, (in the city), and was 
fetching round prices in the adjacent country. 

Thomas represents Philadelphia as containing two 
thousand houses in 1697. Mr. Westcott declares this 
to be a great exaggeration. " In 1700 there were only 
seven hundred houses, and in 1749 but two thousand 
and seventy-six." 2 Mr. Westcott's figures are, of 
course, the right ones, yet it must be observed that 
Richard Norris, a sea captain, just come from Phila- 
delphia, writing to .Penn under date of Dec. 12, 1690, 
a letter which Penn himself published in pamphlet 
form in London, 3 states that " The Bank and River- 
Street is so filled with Houses that it makes an in- 
closed Street with the Front in many places, which 
before lay open to the River Delaware. There is 
within the bounds of the City at least fourteen Hundred 
Houses, a considerable part of which are very large 
and fair buildings of Brick ; we have likewise wharfs 
Built out into the River, that a Ship of a Hundred 
Tun may lay her side to." All the writers quoled 
above have much to say of the rapid growth and de- 

s History of Philadelphia, chapter xlii. 

3 See Penmybiania Magazine, vol. iv. p. 200; see also a note on this 
Bubject at the foot of a preceding page. 



146 



HISTOKY OF PHILADELPHIA.. 



velopment of Philadelphia, which seems to strike 
every one as if it were a sort of miracle. Mr. Thomas, 
in the letter just mentioned, says that they have a 
plentiful market two days in the week, with all man- 
ner of provisions and fruit in great plenty. " Many 
Houses were Built the last Summer, and I heard 
many more are agreed for to be built." The city had 
a good trade with the West Indies in biscuit, flour, 
beef, and pork. Capt. Morris said he noticed the 
city's rapid growth each time he returned to it. His 
cargo to England consisted of " Skins, Beavers, Otters, 
Minks, iJear, Bear, Fox, and Cats, with other sorts, 
with Oyle and Whalebone." A great flock of sheep 
was kept in the town liberties, and a woolen-factory 
at work, employing several carders and spinners, and 
turning out " very good Stuff and Serges." " Phila- 
delphia is mightily improved," writes William Rod- 
ney the same year, " (for its famous Buildings, Stone, 
Brick and Timber Houses of very great Value, and 
good Wharfs for our Shipping) the most of any new 
settlement in the World for its time." R. Hill (same 
year) writes to Penn of the pleasure he has received 
in beholding the improvements in "that Famous 
City (in our parts) and situation of Philadelphia, from 
which we in Maryland have lately received great 
benefit and supply for our Fleet, by being furnished 
with Bread, Beer, Flower, and other provisions, to 
great quantities at reasonable Rates and short warn- 
ing." C. Pickering writes: " Philadelphia will flour- 
ish ; here are more good Houses Built this Summer 
(1690) than ever was in one Year yet; things, that is 
Provision and Corn, are vary plentiful ; ... an oil- 
mill is erecting to make Coal (colza) and Rape-seed 
oyle," etc. William Bradford tells the Governor that 
Samuel Carpenter and he are building a paper-mill 
about a mile from Penn's mills at Schuylkill, and hope 
to have paper within four months ; " the Woollen Man- 
ufactories have made a beginning here, and we have 
got a Publick Flock of Sheep in this Town, and a 
Sheepheard or two to attend them." Alexander 
Beardsley writes that the city has received an access 
of population from New York, among them Jacob 
Telner (the original patentee of Germantown) : 

" Mine friends and others are already come, so that if we do not pre- 
vent it ourselves by misliving, this is likely to be a good place. Mc- 
thinks it seems to me as if the Lord had a blessing in store for this placol 
here is a good government, and the magistrates are careful to keep good 
order, to suppress Vice and encourage Virtuous Living; and a watch U 
kept every Night by the Housekeepers, to see that no Looseness nor 
DrunkenneSB take place. The People go on with Building very much , 
since thou went from here many good Houses are Built on the Front 
at the least twenty this Year ; the Bank (by the River) is tnken up, all 
from the Blue Anchor beyond the penny Pot-House. . . . People seem 
eager io Building, and House Rent towards the River is high." " Phil- 
adelphia thrives to admiration," says another writer quoted in this ab- 
stract of letters, " both in way of Trade aud also in Building, and is 
much altered since thou wert here." In John Goodson's letter we are 
told that" We now begin to have a Trade abroad as well as at home; 
here bo several merchants that Transport several Ship-loads of Bread, 
Flower, Beef and Pork to Barbadoes and Jamaica; a fine Trade here 
in the Town, consisting of many Trades-Men, which are eight Mer- 
chants, Responsible Men, House-Keepers, twenty-nine Shop-Keepers, 
great and small, three Brewers that send off many a Ton of good Malt- 



Beer, -three Maltsters in this Town also, besides many that are in the 
Country, seven Master Bakers, some of them bake and send away many 
Thousand Bushels in a Tear of Bread and Flour, this is Truth; four 
Master Butchers, nine Master Carpenters, seven Master Bricklayers, four 
Brick-Makers with Brick-Kills, nine Master Shoemakers, nine Master 
Taylors, two Pewterers, one Brasier, one Saddler, one Clock and Watch- 
Maker, one Potter, three Tallow-Chandlers, two Sope-Makers, three 
Woolen-Weavers that are entering upon the Woolen Manufactory in 
the Town, besides several in the country ; and five miles off is a Town 
of Dutch and German People that have set up the Linnen Manufactory, 
which weave and make many Hundred Yards of pure fine Linnen Cloath 
in a Year, that in a short time I doubt not but the country will live 
happily ; five SmitliB, one Comb-Maker, one Tobacco-Pipe Maker, three 
Dyers, one Joyner, one Cabinet-Maker, one Rope-Maker that makes 
Ropes for Shipping, three Master Ship-Carpenters, three Barbers, two 
Chirurgeons, three Plasterers, several Victualing Houses or Ordinaries. 
All the fore-mentioned Trades are sufficieut House-Keepers, and live 
gallantly ; four Master Coopers that make abundance of cask for the sea, 
besides many families of labouring People and Sawyers that live happily, 
six Carters that have Teams daily employed to carry and fetch Timber 
and Bricks, Stones and Lime for Building, which goeth on to Admira- 
tion. They Build all with Brick aud Stone now, except the very 
meanest sort of people, which Build framed Houses with Timber and 
Fetheredg-Buards without side, and lathM and plaster'd within, two 
stories high, very pretty houses; they are like the Buildings at the 
Park in Southwark. We have Rocks of Lime-Stones, whore many 
Hundreds, yea Thousands of Bushel* of Lime is made in a year for this 
Town." " My Friends," concludes this pious John Goodson, " have all 
about twenty-one Meeting-Places established in Pennsylvania, and 
six meetings fixed around the city, all within six miles." 

These contemporary letters seem to disarm the 
published accounts of Philadelphia's progress of any 
suspicion of exaggeration. They make it plain that 
the city was growing very rapidly under the stimu- 
lus of an accelerated immigration and a commerce 
and internal trade which was very profitable and in- 
creased every day. The shipping was comparatively 
large, and the frequent arrivals, and departures gave 
the place a busy, bustling aspect, which even ex- 
tended itself to Chester, New Castle, Christina, Hore- 
kills, Salem, Burlington, and other parts on the river. 
The number of sailors of every nationality, of for- 
eign merchants and traders come to buy and sell, had 
already led to the introduction of no little of the 
sorts of vice and debauchery which naturally attach 
to active . seaport towns, greatly scandalizing the 
quiet Quakers. The letters of Penn and the orders 
and remonstrances and explanations of Council on 
this subject bear ample testimony to this debauch- 
ery. 1 

It was not difficult for merchants who were largely 
engaged in trade with the New England colonies, the 
West Indies, and with Europe, and making a profit 
of nigh upon one hundred per cent, on each venture 
and its return (English goods, that is to say, ex- 
changed either directly for furs, etc., or indirectly for 
Pennsylvania flour and bread sent to the West Indies 
and there bartered for tropical products for the English 
market) to rebuild their original frame cabins with 

1 See Council proceedings aud Penn correspondence, 1G89-99. It 
may be said here, to avoid the necessity of a refoi'ence for each sentence 
of this chapter, that every fact stated in it rests upon contemporary 
authority, Buch as those just named and the body of original letters 
which have been already quoted in connection with this subject. The 
Pennsylvania Historical Society has done a great work in republishing 
these originals. 



MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE SETTLERS. 



147 



stately piles of brick. Fortunes were swiftly made, 
and, invested in improvements in and around the city, 
went a great way. Labor was comparatively high, 
but materials were cheap. Budd estimates that the 



alleys and lanes, several fine squares and courts within 
this magnificent city. As for the particular names of 
the several streets contained therein, the principal 
are as follows, viz. : Walnut Street, Vine Street, 




THE OLD SLATE-ROOF HOUSE. 



six hundred thousand bricks for his proposed granary 
could be bought for eight shillings per thousand. 
"Madam Farmer," who was the first person to burn 
stone lime in Philadelphia (Budd, in 1685, says no 
stone lime had then been discovered) offered, in 1686- 
87, to sell ten thousand bushels of Schuylkill lime at 
sixpence per bushel at the kiln. The frames of 
houses, all of hewn timber, cost little beyond the 
charges for hewing and handling, and sawed lumber 
was cheap and plentiful. Hence there must have been 
as much building going on as was required by the 
increase of population, in addition to the new and 
larger structures which took the place of more primi- 
tive ones as wealth increased. Penn, in his " Fur- 
ther Account of Pennsylvania" (1685), mentions nine 
streets running from river to river and twenty-one 
streets crossing them at right angles. Of these he 
names sixteen streets, " the names," he says, " being 
mostly taken from the things that grew spontaneously 
in the county." 1 Gabriel Thomas, describing the city 
as he saw it in 1697, says, " There are many lanes and 
alleys, as, first, Hutton's Lane, Morris Lane, Jones' 
Lane, wherein are very good buildings; Shuter's 
Alley, Yower's Lane, Walter's Alley, Turner's Lane, 
Sikes' Alley, and Flowers' Alley. All these alleys 
and lanes extend from the Front Street to the Second 
Street. There is another alley in the Second Street 
called Carter's Alley. There are also, besides these 

1 Of the streets named, "the situation of Cranberry, Plumb, Hickory, 
Oak, Beech, Ash, and Poplar Streets is not now to be ascertained."— 
Weetcolt, chap. xxxi. 



Chestnut Street, Sassafras Street, taking their names 
from the abundance of those trees that formerly grew 
there ; 2 High Street, Broad Street, Delaware Street, 
Front Street, with several of less note, too tedious to 
insert here." 3 

" Rather named to accommodate Penn's whim. " Chestnut Street was 
at first called Wynne, after Dr. Thomas Wynne, of Wales, who came here 
in the good ship ' Welcome' with William Perm. The founder had de- 
sired his province to be called Sylvania, but, yielding obedience to his 
monarch's pleasure, he submitted to its being called Pennsylvania. It 
was indeedasylvan Bcene, — earth neversawafairer, — and so, as amatter 
of course, the streets of the city, that he doubted not was to be one of 
the mighty ones of the world, were to be named after the trees of the 
beautiful forest that then covered almost all of the land." — Townsend 
Ward in Penna. Marj., vol. iv. p. 409: "Second Street and the Second 
Street Road and their Associations." 

s In a note to the forty-second chapter of his" History of Philadelphia" 
Mr. Thompson Westcott Bays that none of these names of lanes and alleys, 
except Carter's Alley, is now borne by streets or alleys. " Jones' Lane 
was the first above High Street, running from Front to Second, adjoin- 
ing a lot of Griffith Jones. It was afterwards called Jones' Alley, then 
Pewter Platter Alley, from the sign of a tavern once in it, then Jones' 
Alley again, and now Church Alley. Carter'B Lane, now called Carter's 
Street, is the first below Chestnut Street. ... It was named from Wil- 
liam Carter, owner of an adjoining lot on Second Street." . . . Hutton's 
Lane, afterwards Gray's Alley, the second above Walnut Street, now 
called Gatzmer Street. Thomas Hooton owned an adjoining lot. Tur- 
ner's Lane, from Robert Turner, the firBt below Mulberry Street, now 
Coombs' Alley. Yower's (Ewer's) Lane, above Chestnut Street, now 
Black Horse Alley. MorriB' Alley is supposed to be what is now called 
Gothic Street. Sikes' Lane is now Ingles' Street, and Shelter's, Flower's, 
and Waller's Alleys cannot be assigned definite positions. According to 
Townsend Ward, Col. Clement Biddle lived corner of Gray's Alley and 
Front Street ; on the southeast corner of Second Street and Morris' Alley, 
where the buildingof the Chamber of Commerce now is, Samuel Carpenter 
built, in 16S7, the slate-roof house, which Btood till 1867. It was much the 
finest house in the city. William Penn lived there in 1699, James Logan 
entertained Lord Cornbury there in 1702, and Governor James Hamilton, 



148 



HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA. 



There were three fairs a year and two markets every 
week in Philadelphia in Thomas' time. " They kill 
above twenty fat bullocks every week in the hottest 
time of summer, besides many sheep, calves, and hogs. 
. . . Here is lately built a noble town-house, or guild- 
hall, also a handsome market-house and a convenient 
prison." 1 The large and commodious wharves are 
also mentioned, and timber-yards, and Robert Tur- 
ner's ship-yard. The stairs to the water's edge at 
Carpenter's and Tresse's wharves, Carpenter's derrick, 
granaries, and store-houses, Wilcox's rope-walk, and 
the large breweries and bake-houses are all spoken of; 
also the schools, the cook-shops, the paper-mill, the 
wool-weavers, and the prosperous tradesmen. To cap 
the climax, Thomas declares that men in Philadelphia 
are not jealous and old maids do not exist, "for all do' 
commonly marry before they are twenty years of age." 
Some mansions and warehouses of that day must have 
been really handsome buildings, judging from the 
attention they attracted. Of such were the seats of 
Joseph Growden, in the suburbs, who had a thousand 

Mrs. Howell, and Mrs. Graydon weresuccessively its occupauts, the ladies 
using it for a boarding-house. Mr. Ward adds that " From the frequent 
chunges in the names of streets in Philadelphia one might suppose we 
here were afflicted with a perpetual French Revolution, the main features 
of which, since the disuse of the guillotine, being an entire change in 
the nameB of streets. But if it be not owing to French influence.it may 
be that the movement in favor of womeu's rights has disturbed us, since, 
fur all the world, our streets are like a parcel of school-girls, who so .'re- 
quently and so entirely change their names that their own mothers no 
longer know them. Gothic Street was first Morris' Lane, then Norris' 
Alley. Gatzmer Street was Button's Lane, then Gray's Alley. Inglie 
Street was Syke's Lane, then Abraham Taylor's Alley. Gold Street 
was first New Bank Alley, then Bank Alley. Lodge Alley is lost, 
or it is now considered a continuation of and is called Gothic Street. 
Carter, as a name, is preserved, notwithstanding a desperate attempt to 
change it. The alley part is lost, but the fact that Carter had made a 
bequest to the poor of the city saved the name." 

1 "At the time when Gabriel ThomaB wrote, in 1697, there was no 
town-house, or guild-hall, in Philadelphia, and no market-houBe, and 
the prison was a rented house. These buildings were erected in later 
years." — Weslcolt, chap. xlii. There was, however, a marjcet-place as 
early as 1683, where butchers, etc., erected movable stalls ; these may 
have become fixtures in the time of Thomas. In 1693 there was a bell 
for market, which argues a belfry, and the clerk was an important officer, 
being wood-corder as well as examiner of weights and measures. (Col- 
onial Eecords, vols. i. and ii.) As to prisons, the Council proceedings 
contain the following: 

(1) 16th of 11 th Month ,1683, " Ordered, That Wm. Clayton build a Cage, 
AgainBt the next Council dny, 7 foot high, 7 foot long & 5 foot broad." 

(2) July 26, 1701. " Willni. Clayton, of Chichester, producing an acct. 
of Eleven pounds eleven Shills. due to his ffather, Wm. CI., deceased, 
for building a Cage for Malefactors in the Town of Philadelphia, at the 
first settling of this Province, Onl r ., that the Prov 1 . Treasurer discharge 
the Said acct." 

(3) 3l8t of March, 1684. "The Petition uf Samll Hersent was read, 
Concerning y° finishing of y Prison. He i« referred to y e Justices of y 
County Court." 

(4) In 1694 the county jail was a hired building and the rent was over- 
due. (Council proceedings, June 4, 1694.) 

(5) In July, 1700, Penn in the chair, the subject of enforcing the law 
about work-houses and prisonB was considered in Council. A lot had 
been already bought on Third Street, and a committee (Edw. Shippen 
and William Clark) was appointed to " go to y» inhabitants adjacent to 
y" prison, & to see what they & others will advance beforehand (to be 
deducted outt of the next County tax to be loid for building a Court 
house) towards removing y° sil gaol & Brick wall." 

(6) In 1708 it was matter of complaint that the courts of Philadelphia 
had to Bit in "an ale-house." 



apple-trees about his place, and Edward Shippen, on 
Second Street, with its handsome grounds, gardens, 
and orchards. 

The streets have been spoken of already. They 
were not paved until quite a late period. In 1700, 
August 15th, during Penn's second visit, it was or- 
dered in Council "y l the King's Highway or publick 
Road & the bridges y ri ° from y° town of Philadel- 
phia to the falls of Delaware y' now are, be w* all 
expedion sufficientlie cut & cleared from all timber, 
trees & stumps of trees, Loggs, & from all other nu- 
sances whatsoever y* Ly cross y° s d way, & y* y° same, 
with all passages in & outt of all creeks & Branches, 
may be made passable, Comodious, safe, and easie for 
man, horse, cart, waggon, or team, be y° rescive (re- 
spective) overseers of the highways and Bridges wt hil1 
the rescive precincts, townships, and Counties of 
Philadelphia & Bucks, according to Law. And y' 
y e respective Courts of Justice & Justices of y" peace 
in y" s d Counties, Cause y° same be dulie p forloed , & the 
Laws in those Cases made & provided to be strictlie 
put in execu™, und r y e rexive penalties y 11 " contained, 
& y' y e Sec rie take care to send a Copie of this ord r to 
y 8 Counties of Philadelphia & Bucks respectivelie." 
This means that the streets were all roads, and poor 
ones at that. It took Isaac Norris' team all day to 
carry a load from Fair Hill to Philadelphia and back, 
yet the Germantown road was one of the earliest laid 
out. The Swedes had no roads. They followed 
bridle-paths on foot or on horseback, and carried 
their freight by water. It was in 1686 that the 
people of Philadelphia began to move for better high- 
ways. The Schuylkill ferry monopoly was then excit- 
ing public attention, and the Council took the whole 
matter of thoroughfares into consideration. There 
was a petition calling attention to the badness of the 
way from Moyamensing to Philadelphia. It was re- 
ferred to " y" County Court, who it's presumed has 
power to appoynt Roads to Landing Places, to Court 
and to Markett." In 1686, 19th of Ninth month, the 
Council appointed R. Turner, J. Barnes, A. Cook, and 
T. Janney, with the Surveyors of Bucks and Philadel- 
phia Counties, to meet and lay out a more commo- 
dious road from Broad Street to the falls of Delaware. 
This was the Bristol road. The Germantown road 
was at first an Indian trail to the Swedes' ford on the 
Schuylkill and to the Susquehanna River at Octorara. 
On 5th of Second month, 1687, the inhabitants of 
Plymouth township petitioned for a cart-road to their 
town. The road from Radnor to the ferry of Schuyl- 
kill was adjusted by Council in 1687 ; a part of it had 
been closed by fences, showing that it was not pre- 
viously a public highway. The same had been the 
case with the road to Bristol, the farmers fencing 
across it and changing the bed, so that complaint 
was made to Council that the people in Bucks County 
were taking their grain to sell or be ground to Bur- 
lington instead of Philadelphia. In 1689 we find 
Robert Turner, Benjamin Chambers, and other peti- 



MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE SETTLERS. 



149 



tioners for a road from Philadelphia to Bucks County. 
This was the beginning of the Oxford or Middle road. 
The York road, from Cheltenham to Philadelphia, 
was ordered in August, 1693. 1 

The Old York road and the County-line road, 
running to Moreland, were laid out in 1697, from 
surveys made by Nicholas Scull, Susquehanna Street 
being laid out at the same time. The Germans at 
Germantown might be trusted to have good roads 
and proper fences. The supervision of these seems 
to have been the chief business of the courts there 
from the day of its organization in 1691. 2 

Besides the main road to Philadelphia the colonists 
at Germantown built for themselves a church road, a 
school-house road, a lime-kiln road, a paper-mill 
road, and several smaller lanes connecting with places 
in the vicinity. Richard Townshend, one of the "Wel- 
come's" passengers, built a grist-mill on the church 
road as early as 1683. This supplied Germantown 
and a large circle of farmers with the best of flour. 
In 1700 Germantown had a mile of main street, lined 
on each side with peach-trees in full bearing, and 
each house had a fine garden. Towns such as this 
are what have contributed so much to earn for Phila- 

1 The fir6t control of roads was by the courts, which appointed over- 
seerB and fence-viewers, the grand jury laying out the roads; in 1692 
the control of roads was given to the townships, and this lasted until 
the adoption of a general road law. 

2 The apportionment of lots in Germantown was made in the cave of 
Pastorals, October, 1683. Pastorius then built himself a small cabin in 
Philadelphia, thirty by fifteen feet This was the hou6e that had the 
oiled-paper windows, and the Latin motto that made Penn laugh. In 
1685 Germantown was finally laid off, the settlement then comprising 
twelve families, forty -one persons in all. Then the Germantown was bo- 
gun with a main street sixty feet wide. This street was marked along the 
Indian trail spoken of, and it must have run through very thick woods, 
for It is recorded that as late as 1717 a bear climbed over the fence into 
-Tames Logan's garden at Stenton, between Philadelphia and German- 
town. In 1691, when the Germantown Germans were naturalized, there 
■were sixty-four males and heads of families in the town. Theirdescend- 
ants are many of them still in the neighborhood, but the names have 
changed materially in spelling: Op de Graeff is Updegraff; Conderts, 
Conrad ; Schumacher, Shoemaker ; Rittinghuysen, Kitten house ; Strepers, 
Streeper; Souplis, Supplee ; Scherker, Yerkes ; Tissen, Tyson; Lucken, 
Lu kens ; Klever, Cleaver ; Knrlis, Corlies ; Cassels, Castle ; Kestner, 
Castner; Backer, Baker, etc. In the same way the names of the origi- 
nal Welsh settlers at Merion and elsewhere have broken down and 
become modern English surnames. " Ap" for son of has either disap- 
peared or been blended with the succeeding word, so that Ap Humphrey 
becomes Pumphrey ; Ap Howell, Powell ; Ap Rees, Price, and Ap Hugh, 
Pugh. Ap John is converted into John's, Johns, or Jones; Ap Edward, 
Edwards; Ap William, Williams ; Ap Robert, Roberts. Ap Owen be- 
comes Bowen, and ApEvan,Bevan. The words designating a man by 
his physical peculiarities, however, have not much changed, — Wynn, 
Winn, Gwynn still means fair, and is still in use ; so also are Lloyd, 
brown, or gray, Gough (goch), red, and Vaughan (vychan), the younger, 
or little one. The Pennsylvania Railroad Company has carefully pre- 
served the old Welsh names in Borne of its stations, as Wynnewood, 
Bryn Mawr, etc., but the owners of those original names have suffered 
them to be corrupted. Thus Ciom has turned into Combe, Glynde is 
Lind,and Caer-bryn .sinks into Coburn. But More (great), Gregg (hoarse), 
Balloch (speckle-face), Doe (black), Grimm (strong) remain unchanged. 
Cradock is an ancient corruption of Caradoc, Chowne is from Chun, 
Meyrick and Merrick from Mairric, the source also of Meredith. 
Madoc is turned into Maddox. Pocock and Bocock are from the Welsh 
Bochog (puffy-cheeked); Davy, Daffy, Dawes, Dawkins, Taffy, Davison, 
are all WelBh forms of David, or Davids (Ap David). The name Pye is 
a corruption of Ap Hugh. 



delphia the reputation of having more beautiful sub- 
urbs than any other large city in America. 

Precisely what sort of houses were built by the first 
settlers in Philadelphia may be known with satisfac- 
tory exactness from the contemporary records. In 
Penn's tract of " Information and Direction to such 
Persons as are inclined to America" we have a de- 
scription of such houses, and we may assume that the 
" Welcome's" passengers erected exactly such struc- 
tures during their probationary period of cave life or 
hut life in the wilderness. The dimensions given are 
almost those of the house of Pastorius: "To build 
them an House of thirty foot long and eighteen foot 
broad with a partition near the middle, and another 
to divide one end of the House into two small Rooms, 
there must be eight Trees of about sixteen inches 
square, and cut off to Posts of about fifteen foot long, 
which the House must stand upon, and four pieces, 
two of thirty foot long and two of eighteen foot long, 
for Plates, which must lie upon the top of these Posts, 
the whole length and breadth of the House, for the 
Gists (joists) to rest upon. There must be ten Gists 
of twenty foot long to bear the Loft, and two false 
Plates of thirty foot long to lie upon the ends of the 
Gists for the Rafters to be fixed upon, twelve pare of 
Rafters of about twenty foot to bear the Roof of the 
House, with several other small pieces, as Wind- 
beams, Braces, Studs, &c, which are made out of the 
Waste Timber. For covering the House, Ends and 
Sides, and for the Loft we use Clabboard, which is 
Rived feather-edged, of five foot and a half long, 3 
that, well Drawn, lyes close and smooth : The Lodg- 
ing Room may be lined with the same, and filled up 
between, which is very Warm. These houses usually 
endure ten years without repair." The cost of such 
a house is given as follows : Carpenter's work (the 
owner and his servants assisting), £7 ; a barn of the 
same dimensions, £5 ; nails and other things to finish 
both, £3 10s. ; total for house and barn, £15 10s. These 
houses had dirt floors, clapboard floors for garret. 
Oldmixon copies these directions verbatim in his 
description of the houses of the first settlers. The 
directions, however, are very incomplete ; no provis- 
ions are made for doors, windows, or chimneys. Of 
the latter these houses had but one, built outside the 
gable of the sitting-room, sometimes of stone, some- 
times of clay and sticks, sometimes of wood only. 
The doors could be made of riven stuff, of course, 
with deer-skin hinges and wooden latch and bar, and 
the windows could be closed with clapboard shutters. 
A large fireplace was needed, with a stone hearth ; 
the table could be made of hewn stuff, resting on 
puncheons driven into the ground, and blocks, stools, 
and benches would answer for seats. Rude wooden 
bedsteads or berths could be contrived along the walls, 
and a few bear-skins, with the bedclothes brought over 



3 " Feather-edged," with one side thinner than the other, as shingles 
are made. 



150 



HISTOKY OF PHILADELPHIA. 



by every emigrant, would make them warm. The 
other furniture would comprise chiefly kitchen uten- 
sils; pork fat, whale or sturgeon oil, and pine knots 
or " light wood" would give all the artificial light 
needed. 

Iron articles were most costly and hardest to get. 
Edward Jones, at Merion, writes in August, 1682, for 
nails, sixpennies and eightpennies ; for mill-iron, an 
iron kettle for his wife, and shoes, all of which he 
says are dear ; " iron is about two and thirty or forty 
shillings a hundred; steel about Is. 5d. per pound." 
In Penn's " Directions" he recommends colonists to 
bring out with them, in the way of utensils and goods, 
" English Woollen and German Linen, or ordinary 
Broad-Clothes, Kereseys, Searges, Norwich-Stuns, 
some Duffels, Cottons and Stroud-waters for the Na- 
tives, and White and Blew Ozenburgs [Osnaburgs] , 
Shoes and Stockings, Buttons, Silk, Thread, Iron 
Ware, especially Felling Axes, Hows, Indian Hows, 
Saws, Frows [frowers, for splitting shingles], Drawing 
Knives, Nails, but of 6d. and Sd. a treble quantity, 
because they use them in shingling or covering of 
Houses." For the first year's stock for a farm he 
advises " three milch cows, with young calves by 
their sides, £10 ; yoke of oxen, £8 ; Brood mare, £5 ; 
two young Sows and a Boar, £1 10s., — in all £24." 
For first year's provisions: Eight bushels of Indian 
corn per capita, and five bushels of English wheat, for 
five persons, £8 7s. 6d. ; two barrels of molasses (for 
beer), £3 ; beef and pork, 120 pounds per head, at Id. 
per pound, £5 ; five gallons spirits at 2s. per gallon, 
10s. Three hands, with a little help from the woman 
and boy, can plant and tend 20,000 hills of corn 
(planted four feet each way, there are 2717 hills to an 
acre, or seven and one-third acres to the whole num- 
ber of hills), and they may sow eight acres of spring 
wheat and oats, besides raising peas, potatoes, and 
garden stuff. The expected yield will be 400 bushels 
of corn, 120 bushels of oats and wheat, etc. These 
calculations were moderate for a virgin soil, free from 
vermin. Dr. More, in his letter to Penn in Septem- 
ber, 1686, says, " I have had seventy ears of Rye 
upon one single root, proceeding from one single corn ; 
forty-five of Wheat ; eighty of Oats; ten, twelve, and 
fourteen of Barley out of one Corn. I took the curi- 
osity to tell one of the twelve Ears from one Grain, 
and there was in it forty-five grains on that ear ; above 
three thousand of oats from one single corn, and 
some I had that had much more, but it would seem 
a, Romance rather than a Truth if I should speak 
what I have seen in these things." 

A better class of houses than these clapboard ones 
with dirt floors were soon built. Indeed, the old 
log houses of the Swedes were more comfortable, 
especially when built like that of Sven Seners' at 
Wicaco, with a first story of stone and the super- 
structure of logs. A well-built log house, on a stone 
foundation, well filled in with bricks or stone and 
mortar, and ceiled inside with planking like a ship, 



makes the dryest, warmest, and most durable country- 
house that can be built. But in Philadelphia the set- 
tlers immediately began to burn bricks, and construct 
houses of them, often with a timber framework, in 
the old Tudor cottage style. This sort of building 
went on rapidly as soon as limestone began to be 
quarried and burnt. In Penn's " Farther Account," 
etc. (1685), he mentions the fact that he had built his 
brick house (probably the one in Letitia Court) in a 
good style and fashion " to incourage others, and that 
from building with wood," and he adds that "many 
have Brick Houses are now going up, with good cel- 
lars." He enumerates houses built by Arthur Cook, 
William Frampton, John Wheeler, the two brick- 
makers, Samuel Carpenter, John Test, N. Allen, and 
John Day, on Front Street chiefly. All these houses 
have balconies, he says. Pastorius is burning bricks 
at Germantown ; Carpenter has a kiln for shell-lime 
on his wharf; a large plain brick house, in the cen- 
tre, 60 feet by 40, is erecting for a meeting-house ; 
another of the same dimensions on the river front or 
bank is also building for an evening meeting. 

This better class of houses was of course, more 
elaborately furnished. It may be noticed that in 
John Goodson's directory cabinet-makers and other 
workmen in furniture and interior movables are men- 
tioned, but all the first settlers must have brought or 
imported their furniture from Europe. It was stiff 
and heavy, scarcely anticipating that slim and spind- 
ling style which came in with the next English sov- 
ereign, and has recently been revived with an ex- 
travagance of pursuit seldom exhibited except in 
bric-a-brac hunters and opera-boufle artistes. As yet 
not much mahogany and rosewood were used by the 
Northern nations (except the Dutch), but good solid 
oak, well-carved, and walnut were the favorite woods. 
There were great chests of drawers, massive buffets, 
solid tables, with flaps and wings, straight-back oak 
chairs, well-carved, leathern-seated chairs, studded 
with brass nails, and tall Dutch clocks. Much of the 
table furniture was pewter or common delf ware ; 
brass and copper served in the kitchen, where now 
tin is used. Wood was the only fuel, and the fire- 
places, enormously capacious, had great iron dogs in 
them, to which, in winter-time, the back-log was often 
dragged by a yoke of oxen with the log-chain. Cranes 
and hooks, suspended in these fireplaces, held pots 
for the boiling, and the roasting was done on spits or 
upon "jacks," which dogs had to turn. The bread 
was baked in a brick oven usually outside the house, 
and the minor baking in "Dutch ovens," set upon 
and covered over with beds of red-hot coals. In the 
family part of the house the brass andirons and tongs 
and fender made the fire-glow upon the deep hearth 
look doubly cheerful. The Quakers did not use 
stoves until Benjamin Franklin inveigled them into 
it with that simulacrum of an open fireplace called 
the Franklin stove. The Swedes scarcely had chim- 
neys, much less stoves, but the Germans early im- 



MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OP THE SETTLERS. 



151 



ported the great porcelain stoves, which they were 
familiar with at home, and which they used until 
Christopher Saur, the Germantown printer, invented 
the ten-plate stove, for which lovers of the beautiful 
will scarcely know how to forgive him. All well-to- 
do families had good store of linen for bed clothes, 
blankets, etc. ; the washing was not done often, and 
the chests of drawers were filled with homespun. 
Especially was this the case among the German set- 
tlers, who scarcely washed up the soiled house and 
person wear more than once in a quarter. It was the 
pride and test of a good housewife to have more linen 
made up than she knew what to do with, and this 
continues to be the case even to-day in Berks, York, 
and Lancaster Counties. 1 It is noteworthy that the 
Germans built their houses with one chimney, in the 
centre of the building, the English with » chimney 
at each end, and this distinction was so commonly 
marked as to attract the attention of travelers. 2 In 
their bedroom furniture the Germans substituted the 
" feather deck" for the blanket, — more majorum, — and 
this uncomfortable covering is still retained. 

In the houses the floors down-stairs were sanded. 
There were no carpets as yet, not even home-made ones, 
and the Germans have not been using these for a 
hundred j'ears. William Penn had no carpets in his 
Pennsbury Manor house. The large, heavy tables in 
the dining and living rooms of the early homes 
groaned with plenty, and the great pewter dishes 
were piled high. The people worked hard, and they 
did not stint themselves. The Swedes, Germans, and 
Quakers were all of them hearty feeders, and they 
liked gross food. No dread of dyspepsia limited their 
dishes ; they had abundance and enjoyed it. Only 
a few men of English habits and fond of port, brandy, 
and madeira, like Capt. Markham, ever had the gout. 3 
The rivers teemed with fish, and the Quakers early 
learned the virtues and delicious flavor of the shad, 
broiled on a plank at one side the fireplace, while a 
johnny-cake browned on another plank at the other 
side of the fire. Penn grew so fond of these that in 
1686 he wrote to Harrison to send him some "smoakt 
haunches of venison and pork. Gett them of the 
Sweeds. Some smoakt shadd and beef. The oldpriest 
at Philadelphia (Fabricius) had rare shadd. Also 
some peas and beans of that country." Richard 
Townshend, in 1682, says that the first year colonists 
almost lived on fish, of which great quantities were 

1 In a clever little volume, published in 1873, called " Pennsylvania 
Butch and other Essays," we read of one extremely provident and fore- 
handed damsel, who had a bureau full of linen shirts and other clothes 
ready made up for her future husband, whom she was yet to meet, and 
whose measure she could, of course, only guess at, by assuming that the 
right man, when he did come, would be of the size and figure she had 
in her mind's eye in cutting out the garments. 

2 Schoepfs " Reise Durch Pennsylvanien," 1783, quoted by I. D. Rupp, 
notes v to Dr. Rush's pamphlet on "Manners of the Germans in Pennsyl- 
vania." 

3 In Governor Fletcher's time the Council adjourned to meet again in 
Markham 's house because the gout prevented him from going out, and 
Fletcher wanted a full attendance of his advisers. 



caught, the winter being an open one, and venison, — 
" We could buy a deer for about two shillings, and a 
large turkey for about one shilling, and Indian corn 
for about two shillings and sixpence per bushel." 
Sixrockfish or six shad could be bought for a shilling; 
oysters two shillings a bushel, herrings one shilling 
and sixpence per hundred. Sturgeon were caught 
for food, and also for the oil they supplied. The 
Delaware and the Schuylkill and adjacent pools and 
marshes were the resort of myriads of wild-fowl, 
from swan and geese down to rail and reed birds. 
As soon as the settlers became established, the flesh 
of all domesticated animals was cheap in the mar- 
kets. Every family kept its own cows, made its own 
butter and cheese, salted, cured, and smoked its own 
bacon, beef, herring, shad, venison, and mutton. 
The smoke-house, dairy, and poultry-house were ap- 
pendages to all town houses, and most of them had 
their own vegetable gardens likewise. It was the 
custom then, and remained so until long after the be- 
ginning of the present century, for every house to be 
provisioned as if to stand a siege. The cellars had 
great bins for potatoes and other roots and apples ; 
there were tiers of barrels of fresh cider and casks 
for vinegar to ripen in, and in a locked recess were 
usually some casks of madeira, sherry, port, rum, 
brandy, gin, etc., for the master and his guests, with 
marsala and malaga for the women and children. 
There was an astonishing amount of drinking going 
on all the time; all drank something, if it was only 
ale or small beer. The pantry and store-house of 
the mistress was for use, not ornament. Her barrels 
of saur-kraut were in the cellar, her firkins of apple- 
butter occupied the ample garret, along with strings 
of onions, hampers of dried peaches and apples, and 
great bundles of dried herbs; but in the store-room 
the deep-bottomed shelf was ranged around with gray 
stone jars of large capacity, filled with pickles, the 
shelf above it marshaled a battalion of glass jars of 
preserves of every sort, and the upper shelves bent under 
the weight of bottles filled with balsam apples for 
cuts and bruises in case of need, cordials, lavender, 
aromatic vinegars, and a hundred deft contrivances 
to tickle the palate, and deprave all stomachs but 
such as those of these hardy toilers in the open air. 

The gardens yielded all the common vegetables, 
and people who ate so largely of salted meats and fish 
required much vegetable food and many sweets anil 
acids to protect them from scorbutic affections. 
Onions, turnips, cabbage, potatoes were supplemented 
with the more delicate vegetables known in Germany, 
The Indians supplied the colonists with their first 
peas, beans, and squashes, taught them how to boil 
mush, to pound hominy, to roast the tender ears of 
corn, and prepare the delightful succotash. Much 
pastry was used, many sweetmeats and pickles, but 
not very high seasoning. At table, until tea and 
coffee became regular articles of diet with all classes, 
cider and the small beers of domestic brewing were 



152 



HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA. 



served without stint at every meal. In winter the 
beers were sweetened, spiced, warmed, and drunk for 
possets. Wines did not appear except upon the tables 
of the well-to-do, but rum and spirits were in every 
house, and all took their morning and noon drams in 
some shape or other. The effects of alcohol were 
neutralized by the active outdoor life all led, and by 
the quantities of coarse food taken at every meal. 
In the journal of William Black, who was in Phila- 
delphia in 1744, 1 it is made to appear among the 
duties of hospitality to be treating to something or 
other every hour in the day. This young fellow 
either had a very strong head, or alcohol did not 
make the same impression upon the strong, healthy 
frame of the youth of that day which it does upon 
modern effeminate men. There was bread, cider, 
and punch for lunch, rum and brandy before dinner, 
punch, madeira, port, and sherry at dinner, bounce 
and liqueurs with the ladies, and wine and spirits ad 
libitum till bedtime. The party are welcomed too 
with a bowl of fine lemon punch big enough to have 
"swimm'd half a dozen young geese." After five or 
six glasses of this " poured down our throats," they 
rode to the Governor's house, were introduced and 
taken into another room, "where we was presented 
with a glass of wine," and it was punch, spirits, or 
" a few glasses of wine" wherever they went during 
their stay, his friends being, as he says, as liberal with 
their good wine "as an apple-tree of its fruit on a 
windy day in the month of July." 

The dress of the people of Philadelphia in the early 
days of which we write was simple, plain, but not 
formal as that of the Quakers subsequently became. 
The country people, for their ordinary wear, made 
much use of serviceable leather doublets and breeches, 
woolen waistcoats, felt hats, heavy shoes with leather 
leggings, or else boots. They wore stout flannel next 
to the skin in winter, rough coats, and many woolen 
wraps about the throat; in summer, coarse Osnaburgs 
and home-made linens. All wore wigs, and the dress 
suits of cloth or camlet were brave with buttons, 
braid, and buckles, silk stockings and embroidered 
waistcoats, gold-laced hats and fine lace ruffles and 
cravats. Gentlemen wore their small swords; work- 
men and laborers either dressed in leather, druggets, 
serge, fustian, or lockram, or else in Osnaburgs. 
Common women and servants wore linen and do- 
mestics, linseys and calicoes ; on their heads a hood 
or quilted bonnet, heavy shoes, home-knit stockings 
of thread or yarn, petticoats and short gowns, with a 
handkerchief pinned about the shoulders. The ladies 
had of course more brilliant and varied wardrobes; 
the hat was high-crowned, the hair much dressed; 
stomachers and corsage long and stiff; much cambric 
about the neck and bosom, much gimp, ribbon, and 

1 Black was a young Virginian, secretary of the commissioners ap- 
pointed by Governor Gooch, of Virginia, to unite with those of Penn- 
sylvania and Maryland to treat with the Six Nations in 1744. His diary 
has been published in the Peimri. Moguzine, vol. i. 



galloon; silk or satin petticoats, and dainty shoes 
and stockings. A friend in 1697 sent Phineas Pem- 
berton's wife " an alamode hood," and the ladies 
would contrive always to have something "a la 
mode." In the inventory of Christopher Taylor's 
estate are enumerated " a baratine body, stomacher, 
and petticoat, cambric kerchiefs, and forehead cloths." 
In that of John Moon were a "fine Brussels camlet 
petticoat, a yellow silk mantle, silk band and sash, 
silk and satin caps, hoods, lute-strings, white silk 
hoods." William Stanley's store had for sale " frieze, 
serge, broadcloth, Holland linen, yellow, green, and 
black calicoes, satins, lute-strings, tabby, silk plush, 
ribbon, striped petticoats, phillimot, ferret, flowered 
silks, thread laces, gimps, whalebones, galloons." Le- 
titia Penn did not disdain to buy finery in Philadel- 
phia, — caps, buckles, a watch, and other goldsmith's 
articles. There was not a great amount of luxury, 
however, nor much plate nor display of fine articles. 
The people's habits were simple. They were all in- 
dustrious, ploddingly so, and the laws and sentiment 
and temper of the influential classes frowned equally 
upon display and extravagance. The wild youth, the 
sailors and laborers sometimes broke bounds, but the 
curb was in their mouths and they were soon reined 
up. 

The population seemed to realize that they had 
their fortunes to make, and that good pay and great 
industrial opportunities made idleness and loose, ex- 
travagant living inexcusable. Wages were compar- 
atively high, labor was respectable and respected, 
and no community has ever exceeded, in rapidity 
and symmetry of industrial development, the prog- 
ress made by Philadelphia and its environs during 
the first twenty years of the town's existence. In 
1689 there were ten vessels sent to the West Indies 
freighted with produce of the province, and the same 
year fourteen cargoes of tobacco were exported. In 
1698 the river-front abounded with the conveniences 
and facilities requisite for an extensive commerce, 
and for building and repairing vessels, as well as 
loading and unloading them. Ship carpenters earned 
five and six shillings a day in wages, and on that pay 
would soon save money. The trade to the West Indies 
and Brazil consisted of horses and other live-stock, 
provisions, staves, etc. The vessels themselves were 
sold with their cargoes, and every one might have 
his little venture in a traffic which paid double 
the investment on each risk. Thus the ship carpen- 
ter, who laid by one day's wages a week, could, in a 
month or two, be trading to the Indies so as to give 
him £50 or £60 clear money at the end of a year, 
and that would buy him a farm, build him a house, 
or give him a share in some vessel on the stocks. In 
ten years he could become a capitalist, as many of 
his trade did so become. The timber of the Susque- 
hanna and Delaware was sometimes sent across the 
ocean in huge raft ships, rigged with sails and manned 
by regular crews. We read of one of these, the 



MANNEES AND CUSTOMS OF THE SETTLERS. 



153 



"Baron Renfrew," measuring five thousand tons, 
which arrived safely in the Downs. 

Mills were established rapidly under the proprie- 
tary government. Penn had two on the Schuylkill. 
Richard Townshend had one at Chester, and one on 
Church Creek in 1683. The Society of Free Traders 
had a saw-mill and a glass-house in Philadelphia the 
same year. The saw-mills still could not meet the 
demand for lumber, and in 1698 hand-sawyers were 
paid six and seven shillings per hundred for sawing 



province imported four hundred thousand gallons of 
rum and sixty thousand gallons of wine a year, 
costing over fifty thousand pounds annually. 

Penn's leading object in establishing fairs in Phil- 
adelphia and the province was to promote industrial 
enterprises. At the first fair in 1686 only ten dollars 
worth of goods was sold. There was no money in 
Philadelphia, and exchanges could not be made. 
The fairs were held twice a year, three days each in 
May and November. These gatherings became very 



pine boards ; in 1705, ten shillings. Shingles in 1698 I popular, and led to license and riot, races, gambling, 



sold for ten shillings per thousand ; hemlock " cul- 
lings," ten shillings per hundred ; timber, six shil- 
lings per ton. Printz's grist-mill on the Karakung 
was soon duplicated after the proprietary government 
took possession. Pastorius says the colony had mills 
enough ; the Frankford Company had established 
several as early as 1686. In 1698, Thomas Parsons 
had a mill at Frankford, and Richard 
Dungworth one in Oxford township. In 
that same year the Darby Creek was 
lined with corn- and fulling-mills, doing 
superior work. 1 Garrett Rittenhouse had 
a grist-mill on Cresheim Creek in 1697, 
and the Robesons at the same time had 
one at Roxborough, on the Wissahickon. 
There were mills on the Pennypack be- 
fore this, and some of these large mills 
added to their profits by having bakeries 
connected, where ship-bread was baked in 
quantities for sea-going vessels. 

We have already spoken of the early 
manufacture of bricks. The Swedes' 
Church at Wicaco, still standing, was 
built of brick in 1700. The first Proprie- 
tary Assembly at Upland was held in a 
brick house, but these bricks were prob- 
ably imported. The Centre Quaker 
meeting-house in Philadelphia was of 
brick, built in 1684. Robert Turner's brick house, 
Front and Arch Streets, was built in 1685, and Daniel 
Pegg's, above the creek, the same year. Penn tried 
to get this house for an executive mansion. An- 
thony Morris had a large brew-house at Dock Creek 
in 1697. Penn's brew-house atPennsbury, still stand- 
ing, was built before his mansion. Penn, Dr. More, 
and several others of the first settlers made strong 
efforts to improve native grapes, introduce the exotic 
grape and manufacture wine. They had wine made 
of fox-grape juice, and fancied it was as good as claret. 
Penn set out a vineyard at Springettsbury, and had a 
French vigneron to tend it. The experiment failed) 
however, and was abandoned before Penn's second 
visit. Pastorius was deceived also, and wrote to Ger- 
many for a supply of wine-barrels, which, however, he 
never filled, unless with cider or peach-brandy. No 
wonder Penn wanted to make wine at home, — his 



and drunkenness, such as made the strict Quakers 
groan. Numerous complaints were recorded against 
them in the courts and proceedings of Council and 
Assembly, and they were finally suppressed, as sup- 
porters of vice and immorality, in 1783. Another 
plan of Penn's was to offer prizes for superior work 
in manufactures. In 1686, Abraham Op den Graaffe, 




1 Gabriel Thomas. 



PENN'S OLD BREW-HOUSE, NEAR BRISTOL, BUOKS COUNTY. 

of Germantown, petitioned Council to grant him the 
Governor's premium for " the first and finest piece 
of linen cloth." About the same time Wigart Lev- 
ering, one of the Germantown colonists, began weav- 
ing in Roxborough. Matthew Houlgate, in 1698, 
bought property in the same township, and began 
a fulling-mill on the Wissahickon. The price in 
1688 for spinning worsted and linen was two shil- 
lings per pound; knitting heavy yarn stockings, half 
a crown per pair. Wool-combers received twelve 
pence per pound ; linen-weavers twelve pence per 
yard of stuff half a yard wide; journeyman tailors 
were paid twelve shillings a week and "their diet." 
There were several tailors early set up in Philadel- 
phia, one of whom, Charles Blackman, did work for 
Governor Penn. The domestic manufactures of the 
day in linen and woolen wear supplied a large part 
of family wants. Fabrics were coarse but serviceable ; 
and the women of the household, after the men had 
broke and hackled the flax and sheared the sheep, 



154 



HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA. 



did all the subsequent work of carding, spinning, 
weaving, bleaching, and dyeing. While wages were 
good, the clothes of apprentices and laborers were not 
expensive. Leather shoes with brass buckles and 
wooden heels lasted as long almost as leather breeches 
and aprons. Hemp and flax Osnaburgs, dyed blue, 
cost only a shilling or one and sixpence per yard, 
and a felt or wool hat and two or three pairs of 
coarse yarn stockings were good for two seasons. 
Wealthy people, who wore imported velvets, satins, 
silks, and nankeens, however, had to pay extrava- 
gant prices for them, and the cost of a fashionable 
outfit often exceeded the money value of an eligible 
farm. The rapid increase of their "bestial" not only 
gave the Pennsylvania planters a valuable line of 
exports, but also early encouraged the manufacture 
of leather. Penn and the Free Society of Traders 
established a tannery in Philadelphia in 1683, and 
it was well supplied both with bark and hides. 
Leather was in general use for articles of clothing, 
such as are now made of other goods. Penn him- 
self wore leather stockings, for which he paid twenty- 
two shillings a pair. In 1695 the exportation of 
dressed and undressed deer-skins was prohibited, in 
order to promote their utilization at home. Paw 
hides cost one and a half pennies per pound, while 
leather sold for twelve pence. A fat cow went to the 
butcher for three pounds, while beef sold for from 
three to four and a half pence per pound, a profit of 
over one hundred per cent, to butcher and tanner. 
But land was cheap, the Barbadoes market was 
always ready to pay well for cattle on the hoof, and 
these things secured good wages for labor in the 
mechanic arts. Curriers, who paid twenty pence a. 
gallon for their oil, received three shillings and four 
pence a hide for dressing leather. Journeymen 
shoemakers were paid two shillings a pair for men's 
and women's shoes, and last-makers got ten shillings 
a dozen for lasts ; heel-makers two shillings a dozen 
for wooden heels. Men's shoes sold for six shillings 
sixpence, and women's for five shillings per pair. 
In 1699 there were two tanneries, Hudson's and 
Lambert's, in Philadelphia, in "the swamp," on 
Dock Creek. Great skill and taste were displayed 
in the various makes of " white leather," soft leather, 
and buckskin for domestic wear, a branch of manu- 
factures taken up by the Swedes in imitation of the 
Indians. 

The mineral wealth of Pennsylvania, suspected by 
the Swedes, began to be revealed very early to the 
primitive settlers under the proprietary government. 
A Dutch colony is claimed to have worked iron in 
the Minnesink long before Penn came over, but there 
is nothing but tradition in regard to these pioneers. 
Penn wrote to Lord Keeper North, in 1683, that 
copper and iron had been found in divers places in 
the province. Gabriel Thomas speaks of the exist- 
ence of iron-stone richer and less drossy than that of 
England; the copper, he says, "far exceeding ours, 



being richer, finer, and of a more glorious color." 
These "finds" were in Chester County, the seat of 
the earliest iron-works in the province. Thomas also 
mentions limestone, lodestone, isinglass, asbestos, and 
amianthus. Blacksmiths earned high wages ; one is 
mentioned who, with his negroes, by working up old 
iron at sixpence per pound, earned fifty shillings a 
day. All the contemporary writers speak of the 
heavy charges for smith-work, though there was no 
horseshoeing to be done. Silversmiths got half a 
crown or three shillings per ounce for working up 
silver, " and for gold, equivalent." There was a fur- 
nace and forges at Durham, in Bucks, before tho 
eighteenth century set in. 

Where there was so much hand-work done, and so 
many things to be accomplished by mere manual 
labor, there was naturally not much call nor room 
for brain-work. The habits of the Swedes, the system 
and culture of the Society of Friends were not par- 
ticularly favorable to intellectual growth nor to edu- 
cation. Many more scholars, wits, and learned men 
came to Pennsylvania in the first two generations 
than went out of it. The learned Swedish pastors 
were exotics, and their successors, from Campanius 
to Collins, had to be imported from the mother- 
country. They did not grow up in the Delaware 
country. Nor did Penn's "wooden country" (as 
Samuel Keimer, Franklin's odd companion at the 
case, calls it) produce any parallels or equals to the 
university scholars who, like Penn, the Lloyds, Logan, 
Growden, Shippen, Nicholas and John More, Pas- 
torius, Wynne, White, Guest, Mompesson, and others, 
devoted their talents and learning to the service of 
the infant commonwealth. There is some truth in 
the satire of Bufus Choate when he toasted Pennsyl- 
vania's two greatest men, " One born in New Eng- 
land, and the other in Old England." Penn himself, 
it was alleged in Council, on the trial of Bradford for 
the unlicensed printing of the charter and laws (a 
work which he was instigated to by Judge Growden), 
had taken the Virginia Governor Berkeley's rule for 
his pattern, and wished to discourage publications of 
all sorts. The learned and elegant professions indeed 
were not well nurtured in Pennsylvania's early days. 
In Goodson's inventory of occupations the " chirur- 
gion" was put down between the barbers and the 
staymakers. Gabriel Thomas shows that the pro- 
fessions were contemned. "Of Lawyers and Phy- 
sicians," he observes, "I shall say nothing, because 
this Country is very Peaceable and Healthy; long 
may it so continue and never have occasion for the 
Tongue of the one or the Pen of the other, both 
equally destructive to men's Estates and Lives." 
Where the sole source of Divinity was "the Inner 
Light," cultivated persons were not to be looked for 
in the ministry ; education was rather esteemed a 
hindrance than a help to the free and perfect ex- 
pression of inspiration. It was a "snare" and a 
" device," like the steeple on the church's tower, the 



MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE SETTLERS. 



155 



stained glass in its windows, like the organ in the 
choir, and the gowns and also the salaries and bene- 
fices of the clergymen. 

Bradford was driven out of Philadelphia more by 
the indifference of its people to the sort of work he j 
chose to make his living by than on account of pros- 
ecution and intolerance. He did not care how active 
hostilities were against him, being a belligerent him- 
self, but apathy was something which baffled him. 
He printed all that offered ; he made work for him- 
self, yet could not get enough to do to support him. 
The little printing he did outside of official matters, 
forms, briefs,- and almanacs, was chiefly polemical, 
acrid as the exudations of the toad, and dry enough 
to reduce a proof-reader's brains to pumice-stone. No 
man of Bradford's energetic and volatile tempera- 
ment could oscillate between John Burnyeat's " Epis- 
tles" and George Keith's "Serious Appeal" and 
live. Bradford stood it for eight years and then fled. 
He did some good work while in the province. His 
Kalendarium Pennsilvaniense shows that a man's in- 
dividuality may impress itself even upon an almanac. 
This, the earliest book printed in the province, came 
out late in 1685 as the calendar of the coming year. 
It has all the features of such works, with a touch of 
Bradford throughout. His chronology begins with 
the Noachian deluge, " 3979 years before the almanac'' 
and the building of London, "2793 years before the 
almanac," and concludes with " the beginning of 
government here by the Lord Penn five years before 
the almanac." And Council forced him to blot over 
his "Lord" Penn with a full-inked "three M quad." 
Bradford published the poem of Richard Frame, 
which has been quoted from on a preceding page. 
He published one Burlington and two Philadelphia 
almanacs, a good many broadsides and tracts, " The 
Temple of Wisdom for the Little World," which con- 
tains (a proof of the printer's taste) Bacon's Easnys 
and Thomas Quarles' Emblems, proposals for print- 
ing the Bible, large copy, by subscription, a number 
of Keith's offensive diatribes, several papers by Gers- 
hom Bulkeley on the Connecticut Charter, several 
tracts in answer to Keith, and an anti-slavery poem 
attacking Samuel Jennings. Bradford went to New 
York in 169$, to be succeeded after some years by 
Reynier Jansen, who is thought to have been the 
first printer's apprentice. 

There is really as little to say about the doctors and 
lawyers of the province as Thomas allows. The 
Dutch Annals mention a surgeon of the name of Jan 
Oosting, another, William Van Rasenberg, who was 
called indifferently barber and surgeon, and Everts 
and Arent Pietersen. These three in three years 
received government pay to the amount of two thou- 
sand seven hundred and eighty-eight florins as phy- 
sicians and "comforters of the sick." 1 In the jour- 
nal of Sluyter and Dankers, Otto Ernest Cock is 



1 WeBtcott'B History of Philadelphia, chap, lii. 



called a physician, or rather " a late medicus." In 
addition to Drs. Thomas Wynne, Griffith Owen, 
and Nicholas More, John Goodson was also a phy- 
sician under Penn's government, and so was Edward 
Jones, founder of Merion, and son-in-law of Dr. 
Wynne. Dr. John Le Pierre, who was reputed to be 
an alchemist, came over about the same time as Penn. 
Dr. More did not practice his profession in the col- 
ony, but Griffith Owen was a regular physician from 
the date of his arrival. There were several other 
" chirurgions" among the " first purchasers," but it 
is not ascertained that any of them immigrated to the 
province. Doctors could not be well dispensed with, 
since, in addition to colds, consumptions, and constant 
malarial disorders, the province was visited by three 
or four severe epidemics, including a fatal influenza 
which attacked all the settlements and colonies on the 
Atlantic, an outbreak of pleurisy which was notice- 
ably destructive at Upland and New Castle, and u. 
plague of yellow fever in Philadelphia in 1699. The 
smallpox likewise was a regular and terrible visitor 
of the coast, though its most fearful ravages were 
among the Indians. 

In addition to the leading lawyers already named, 
Charles Pickering appears to have been a member of 
the bar, as well as a planter on a large scale, a miner, 
and copper- and iron-worker, a manufacturer of adul- 
terated coins, and a sort of warden of the territory in 
dispute between Penn and Lord Baltimore. Patrick 
Robinson, the recalcitrant clerk of Judge More's 
court, was an attorney, and Samuel Hersent was 
prosecuting attorney for the province in 1685, after- 
wards securing his election to the sheriffalty of Phila- 
delphia. David Lloyd succeeded him as attorney- 
general, and distinguished himself in the controversies 
with Admiralty Judge Quarry. John Moore was the 
royal attorney in Quarry's court. John White and 
William Assheton were also lawyers in Philadelphia 
before the end of the sixteenth century. 

These gentlemen of the bar found plenty of work 
to do. There were many disputed titles of land, there 
was a great deal of collecting to do in the triangular 
trade between the province, the West Indies, and the 
mother-country, and there were numbers of personal 
issues and suits for assaults, libels, etc. Besides, 
while Penn himself did all he could to prevent litiga- 
tions, the character of his laws necessarily called for 
the constant interference of the courts in affairs not 
properly their concern. There were some sumptuary 
laws, many restrictive ones, and the whole system was 
unpleasantly inquisitive and meddlesome. It kept up 
the same sort of obnoxious interference with private 
business and personal habits which made the Puritan 
system so intolerable, but its penalties had none of 
the Puritan's atrocious severity and bloodthirst. It 
must be confessed that the unorthodox person of gay 
temperament who sought to amuse himself in primi- 
tive Philadelphia was likely to have a hard time of it. 
The sailor who landed there on liberty after a tedious 



156 



HISTORY OP PHILADELPHIA. 



three months' cruise soon found that he was not at 
Wapping. The Quakers had learned to despise riot 
and debauchery, less perhaps because it was vicious 
and demoralizing than for the reason that it was offen- 
sive to their ingrained love of quiet and order and to 
their passion for thrift and economy. Wildness, sport, 
all the livelier amusements were abhorrent to them 
because they signified extravagance and waste. The 
skirts of their Christian charity, admirable, thoughtful, 
and deep as that was, seemed never broad enough to 
embrace or condone prodigality. When the prodigal 
son came home to them the fatted calf was not killed, 
but the question was wonderingly and seriously asked 
(saving the oath), " Mais, que diable allait-il /aire dans 
cette galere?" That was the way precisely in which 
they treated William Penn, Jr., when he was arrested 
for rioting and beating the watch in a tavern. Instead 
of excusing him for his youth and for his worthy 
father's sake, they accused him on that account, and 
the father's great character actually became a part of 
the body of the indictment against the profligate son. 
No wonder that the father should have cried in the 
bitterness of his heart, "See how much more easily 
the bad Friends' treatment of him stumbled him from 
the blessed truths than those he acknowledged to be 
good ones could prevail to keep him in possession of 
it." 

In fact, all that was not exactly according to 
Quaker ways was narrowly looked upon as vice and 
to be suppressed. Christmas mumming was accused 
as flagrant licentiousness. Horse-racing was pre- 
vented by the grand jury. It offended the sobriety 
of the community for ships to fire salutes on arriving 
and departing. The laws against the small vices were 
so promiscuous and indiscriminate and the penalties 
so ill balanced that when the Pennsylvania code was 
finally presented to Queen Anne for approval, her 
ministers drew their perls through half the list of mis- 
demeanors and penalties, for the reason that they " re- 
strain her Majesty's subjects from innocent sports and 
diversions. However, if the Assembly of Pennsyl- 
vania shall pass an act for preventing of riotous 
sports, and for restraining such as are contrary to 
the laws of this kingdom, there will be no objection 
thereto, so it contains nothing else." 1 The character 
of these unnatural restraints is fully illustrated in 
certain " extracts from the records of Germantown 
Court" (1691 to 1707) and " presentments, petitions, 
etc., between 1702 and 1774." 2 For example, Peter 
Keurlis, charged with not coming when the justices 
sent for him, with refusing to lodge travelers, with 
selling barley-malt at four pence per quart, and with 
violating Germantown law by selling more than a gill 
of rum and a quart of beer 'every half-day to each 
individual. Peter's answers cover the whole case of 



1 Privy Council to Governor on repealing cerium laws, Pennsylvania 
Archives, 1709, vol. i. p. 1S5, First Series. 

2 Published in Volume First of Collections of the Pennsylvania His- 
torical Society, pp. 243-58 el teq. 



the absurdity of such apron-string government. He 
did not come because he had much work to do ; he 
did not entertain travelers, because he only sold 
drink and did not keep an ordinary ; he knew noth- 
ing about the four pence a quart law of the province, 
and as for the Germantown statute, the people he sold 
to being able to bear more, he could not or would not 
obey the law. The court, however, took his license 
away from him and forbade him to sell any drink, 
under penalty of £5. Oaths and charges of lying, 
when brought to the court's notice, if the offender ac- 
knowledged his fault and begged pardon, were " for- 
given and laid by," the law making them finable 
offenses. Reinert Peters fined twenty shillings for 
calling the sheriff a liar and a rascal in open street. 
A case of Smith vs. Falkner was continued because 
the day when it was called " was the day wherein 
Herod slew the Innocents." George Muller, for his 
drunkenness, was condemned to five days' imprison- 
ment; "torn, to pay the Constable two shillings for 
serving the warrant in the case of his laying a wager to 
smoke above one hundred pipes in one day." Herman 
Dors, being drunk, called Trinke op den Graeff a 
naughty name, accused Peters of being too kind to 
Trinke, called his own sister a witch and another vile 
name, and said his children were thieves ; brought 
before the court, " and there did particularly clear all 
and every one of the said injured persons, who, upon 
his acknowledgments of the wrongs done them by 
him, freely forgave him;" the court fined him five 
shillings. Peter Shoemaker, Jr., accuses the horses of 
John van der Willderness of being "unlawful," be- 
cause they "go over the fence where it had its full 
height." The jury, however, found Shoemaker's 
fences to be "unlawful." The court orders that 
" none who hath no lot nor land in this corporation 
shall tye his horse or mare or any other cattle upon 
the fences or lands thereof, either by day or night, 
under the penalty of five shillings." Abraham op 
den Graeff is before court for slandering David 
Sherker, saying no honest man would be in his com- 
pany. Verdict for defendant. "Nov. 28th, 1704, 
Daniel Falkner, coming into this Court, behaved him- 
self very ill, like one that was last night drunk, and not 
yet having recovered his tcitts." Falkner seemed so 
aggressive that the sheriff and constable were ordered 
to " bring him out," which was done, he crying, "You 
are all fools !" which indeed was not the remark of a 
drunken but a sober man. No court could continue 
to waste time in preposterous trivial proceedings of 
such sort without exhausting the patience of a com- 
munity and making it impossible for people to avoid 
such outbursts as those of Falkner. 

Among the Philadelphia grand jury presentments, 
etc., quoted in these papers, we find one against George 
Robinson, butcher, " for being a person of evell fame 
as a common swearer and a common drinker, and 
particularly upon the 23d day of this inst., for swear- 
ing three oaths in the market-place, and also for utter- 



PENN'S ADMINISTRATION, 1699-1701. 



157 



ing two very bad curses the 26th day of this inst." 
Philip Gilbeck utters three curses also ; presented 
and fined for terrifying " the Queen's liege people." 
John Smith, living in Strawberry Alley, presented 
" for being maskt or disguised in womens' aparell ; 
walking openly through the streets of this citty from 
house to house on or about the 26th of the 10th month 
[day after Christmas], it being against the Law of God, 
the Law of this province and the Law of nature, to the 
staining of holy profession and Incoridging of wicked- 
ness in this place." All this against an innocent 
Christmas masquerade ! Children and servants rob- 
bing orchards is presented as a "great abuse" and 
"liciencious liberty," a "common nuisance" and 
" agreeviance." Such ridiculous exaggeration de- 
stroys the respect for law which alone secures obe- 
dience to it. John Joyce, Jr., is presented "for 
having to wifes at once, which is boath against y e Law 
of God and Man." Dorothy, wife of Eichard Cant- 
erill, presented for masking in men's clothes the day 
after Christmas, "walking and dancing in the house 
of John Simes at 9 or 10 o'clock at night,"— not even 
charged with being in the street I Sarah Stiner, same 
offense, but on the streets, " dressed in man's Cloathes, 
contrary to y° nature of her sects . . . to y" grate Dis- 
turbance of well minded persons, and incorridging of 
vice in this place.'' John Simes, who gave the mas- 
querade party, is presented for keeping a disorderly 
house, " a nursery to Debotch y* inhabitants and 
youth of this city . . . to y" Greef of and disturbance 
of peaceable minds and propigating ye Throne of wick- 
edness amongst us." Peter Evans, gentleman, pre- 
sented for sending a challenge to Francis Phillips to 
fight with swords. 1 The grand jury report that their 
predecessors having frequently before presented the 
necessity of a ducking-stool and house of correction 
"for the just punishment of scolding, Drunken Wo- 
men, as well as Divers other profligate and Unruly 
persons in this place, who are become a Publick 
Nuisance and disturbance to this Town in Generall, 
Therefore we, the Present Grand Jury, do Earnestly 
again present the same to this Court of Quarter Ses- 
sions for the City, desiring their immediate Care, That 
those public Conveniences may not be any longer De- 
lay'd." Certainly it is a novel idea to class ducking- 
stools and houses of correction among "public con- 



l Evans' challenge was as follows : " Sir : You have basely slandered a 
Gentlewoman that I have a profound respect for, And for my part shall 
give you a fair opportunity to defend yourself to-morrow morning, on 
the west side of Jos. Carpenter's Garden, betwixt seven and 8, where I 
shall expect to meet you, Gladio cinctua, in failure whereof depend upon 
the usage you deserve from yr, etc. 

" Peter Evans. 

" I am at y 8 Pewter Platter." 

Phillips appears to have been arrested, for the grandjury present 
him for contriving to " deprive, annihilate, and contemn" the authority 
of mayor and recorder by saying, " Tell the mayor, Robert Hill, and the 
recorder, Robert Assheton, that I Bay they are no better than Rogues, 
Villains, and Scoundrells, for they have not done me justice, and might 
as well have Bent a man to pick my pockett or rob my house as to have 
taken away my servant," etc. 



veniences." There are three successive presentments 
to this effect. 2 The grand-jury also present negroes 
for noisy assemblages in the streets on Sunday, and 
think that they ought to be forbidden to walk the 
streets in company after dark without their masters' 
leave. Mary, wife of John Austin, the cordwainer, is 
presented because she was and yet is a common scold> 
" a Comon and public disturber, And Strife and De- 
bate amongst her Neighbours, a Comon Sower and 
Mover, To the great Disturbance of the Liege Sub- 
jects," etc. In spite of all these presentments and 
indictments, however,, and especially those against 
drunkenness and tippling-houses, we find in a pre- 
sentment drawn by Benjamin Franklin in 1744 that 
these houses, tha " Nurseries of Vice and Debauch- 
ery," are on the increase. The bill says there were 
upwards of one hundred licensed retail liquor-houses 
in the city, which, with the small groceries, "make 
by our computation near a tenth part of the city, a 
Proportion that appears to us much too great." One 
place, where these houses are thickest, has "obtained 
among the common People the shocking name of 
Hell-town." 



CHAPTER XII. 

PENN'S ADMINISTRATION, 1699-1701 — PENNSBURY 
MANOR— THE PROPRIETARY RETURNS TO ENG- 
LAND. 

The ship — the " Canterbury," Capt. Fryers — in 
which William Penn crossed the ocean to his prov- 
ince in 1699, came up to Chester on December 1st. 
The next day, on landing, the Governor's arrival was 
heralded with a, military salute, in the course of 
which a young man had his arm blown off by the 
premature discharge of the cannon. On Sunday, 
December 3d, Penn reached Philadelphia, and made 
a formal call upon his deputy, Governor Markham, 
the other dignitaries of the town and province, in- 
cluding Judge Quarry, of the Admiralty Court, and 
John Moore, crown prosecutor, having met and re- 
ceived him at the water's edge. From Markham's 
house Penn proceeded to the Friends' meeting-house 
at Se